


New Order

by squintly



Series: Old Magic [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magicians, Alternate Universe - Napoleonic Wars, Alternate Universe - Regency, Anal Sex, Fairies don't need lube, I kind of don't know what to do with myself, I've never written so much plot, Inspired by Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Long, M/M, Oral Sex, There's so much plot guys, but only loosely, novel-length
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:59:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 68,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10003115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squintly/pseuds/squintly
Summary: The year is 1818, and a revolution is brewing.Kylo Ren, disgraced hero of the Napoleonic Wars and the greatest magician of the age, gathers followers from the slums and ghettos of the world with promises of freedom -- freedom from poverty, freedom from fear, freedom from sin. Yet not all believe in his cause. There are those who call his promises empty, his followers slaves, his methods corrupt. Enemies old and new abound, and the kings of the old world will do anything to burn the seeds of his rebellion before they can sprout.And meanwhile, forces as old as the Earth begin to stir, plans grander than anything Ren and his fairy companion could ever comprehend grinding into motion like the cogs of a great machine.The world is changing. The rules have been broken. And when the smoke has cleared and the fire has passed, nothing will ever be the same.





	1. Prologue: Revolution

**Author's Note:**

> So the sequel has finally happened. I hope it was worth the wait.
> 
> As before, a new chapter will be published every day until the fic is finished. It should be up sometime between 7 and 8 o'clock Mountain Time, though after the fiasco of last time, I make no solid promises. :P
> 
> Much thanks to Emerald-Soul on Tumblr for beta reading. This would still be in editing hell without you. Also, thanks to my friend Sam, who helped me make this any kind of historically accurate. I have never known another person who could actually answer the question "What would Tsar Alexander do if there were magicians?"
> 
> Enjoy, my friends, and thank you so much for following me on this crazy ride.

**Prologue: Revolution**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Whistles echoed in the night, pulsing through the narrow ragged streets like cold blood through dying veins. Here and there, candles flickered in cracked, dirty windows, cautious eyes peering through drawn shutters and curious faces peeking around threadbare curtains. The whistles were not unusual in this part of the city, but never had there been this many.

 

Skittering around a tight corner came a white horse, the clattering of its hoof-beats dull and wooden. Driftwood muscles bunched and stretched as it galloped down the winding road, a tail of wetly gleaming black kelp thrashing behind it. The rider hunched against the creature’s thick neck gripped the seaweed mane tight and grinned, long black coat fluttering behind him.

 

A particularly brave or foolish policeman sprinted out into the street ahead, whistle on his lips and palm raised. The horse didn’t slow, and he began to back away, stumbled, fell. The horse leapt over him with no more effort than a stone skipping over water and continued on its way.

 

“Sorry!” Mitaka shouted over his shoulder, still grinning from ear to ear. “Can’t stop now! I have somewhere to be!”

 

A split appeared in the road ahead and Mitaka glanced around, dark eyes catching on a tall smear of moonlit green standing by the left fork. Reed watched him thunder past with a smirk, dark jade eyes shining. When Mitaka reached the next intersection, the fairy was already there, waving him on to the right and away from the glowing lantern-light of the bobbies racing towards him from the left. Mitaka blew him a kiss, Reed’s high honey-bee laughter following him down the narrow alleyway.

 

The largest open area in this neighbourhood was little more than a joining of roads, five coming together to form a haphazard court. Mitaka hopped off the horse as it crumbled into its component parts, breathing hard and rubbing his backside. Conscious of the whistles coming ever closer, he strode out into the closest thing to dead center the irregular little square had and laced his fingers together, giving his knuckles a good crack. Then he dropped into a crouch, making a face as he pushed his fingertips through the thick layer of mud and refuse to reach the cobblestones beneath.

 

“Remember, _alatu nalan_ , not _alata nalon_ ,” Reed reminded him as he flit up beside him like a green shadow cast by a flickering light.

 

Mitaka looked back at him and smirked. “Yeah, I’ve got it, thanks.”

 

“Just reminding you,” Reed said innocently, his shock of burnt gold hair gleaming in the moonlight.

 

The fastest of the policeman entered the little court, saw the magician with his hands on the ground, and immediately scrambled back into the dubious protection of the alley. Numbers would give them courage, but their fear gave Mitaka a few seconds, and that was all he needed.

 

Like a sprout winding through soft earth, a thickening tendril of shining black stone burst through the cobbles between Mitaka’s hands. He stepped back as he stood, watching it grow and twist like a living thing, a budding obsidian flower two, five, ten feet tall. Reed lay one of his long-fingered hands on Mitaka’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

 

“Well done, love,” the fairy said. “On to the next.”

 

A few minutes later, the policemen mustered the courage to come forward, lead by the one he’d jumped over, a portly older man with a bristling grey mustache now covered in dirt, his face red and a nightstick in his hand.

 

“In the name of his majesty King George the Third, I command you to cease and desist immediately!” he called in a booming voice. Doors began to open, the forms of men and women and children peering out into the moonlit court. “Surrender now, magician, or go to the clink bloody!”

 

“Oh, is that how you want this to go?” Reed said, shimmering slightly as he appeared before the eyes of the accumulating crowd. The policemen stumbled backwards again, whispering fearfully to one another as a little boy clinging to his mother’s skirts raised a tiny hand and waved. “Lucky me, I haven’t had a fight in ages. I’d prefer more of a challenge, but I suppose it can’t be helped.”

 

“Almost done,” Mitaka said, the remains of the horse weaving together under his hands.

 

“Stop that right now!” the mustachioed policeman shouted, breaking from his fellows to stride out into the square, nightstick raised. “You great bloody bastards, if you think I’m going to let you carry more of _my people_ off to Hell, you have another damn thing coming!”

 

“You know, he does have a point,” Mitaka mused as he completed the giant basket. “A volcanic island off the coast of Iceland isn’t exactly the Garden of Eden.”

 

“It will be by the time we’re done with it,” Reed said with a smirk. “I’ll thank you to stop there, Mister Policeman. Doph does get so very cross when I turn people inside out.”

 

The policeman stopped in his tracks, though not of his own volition. His legs bunched, but he couldn’t lift his feet from the pavement. The curses he shouted at them made the mother cover her boy’s ears.

 

“Alright!” Mitaka shouted over the policeman’s threats, clapping his hands above his head. “Step right up, one and all, no rushing now, there’s room for everyone! Let the Raven King free you from the shackles of poverty! No more hunger! No more thirst! A solid roof over your head and three meals a day in your belly! Schooling for the little ones! Care for the sick! Come, my brothers and sisters, and be free!”

 

The watchers gathering beyond the police cordon had been waiting. They came, more than two dozen of them; the woman and her boy, an elderly man hopping along on crutches, a pair of pale twin sisters with matching bruises who held hands as they came. The police tried to stop them at first, raising their batons to strike, but the crowd just kept walking, pushing past them and onward into the square. One young officer brought his baton down on a young man with a bag slung over his shoulder, but another grabbed his wrist before he could hit him again, and the man with the bag just glared and carried on.

 

“Evening,” Mitaka said, shaking an elderly Chinese woman’s hand as she stepped up the little set of stairs and hopped down into the basket. A swarthy man with a scruffy beard followed her, and Mitaka shook his hand too, and the hand of both the twins who came after. “Evening. Pleasure to meet you. I was born right around here, you know. Coke Street. Any of you know Mrs Lovett? No? Best pies in London.”

 

“There are more every time,” Reed said, flitting to Mitaka’s side and leaning against the basket. A babe in arms plucked at his golden hair. “We should bring one of the others next time, make the baskets a little less crowded.”

 

“Good idea,” Mitaka said, shaking another hand. “Welcome. Good to have you. Good to have you. Hello, young sir.”

 

“I’m going to be a magician!” the little boy who had waved said, beaming up at him. “I’m going to have a fairy and do miracles just like you!”

 

“I’m sure you will,” Mitaka said with a smile, ruffling his hair.

 

“Bastards!” the mustachioed policeman shouted, still struggling to walk. Streaks of shining tears ran down his weathered face. “You let them go! You let them bloody well go!”

 

“We’re not holding them,” Mitaka said, stepping up into the basket himself as the last of the pilgrims settled in. “We’re setting them free.”

 

Reed raised his hands and the air above the basket shimmered. A patch of sky seemed to round, to bend, and then there was a massive balloon made from stars and blackness hovering in the air, tendrils of black silk hanging down to thread into the basket like snakes. The little boy cheered, along with the old woman, and a spark of flame leapt into being above their heads, filling the balloon with stinging heat.

 

“Stop!” the policeman shouted as the basket began to lift. “You devils! Monsters! Burn in Hell!”

 

“Hell isn’t real!” Reed called down from where he stood on the edge of the basket, holding on to one thick silken rope. “This life is all there is, so if you want to help people, _stop bloody letting them starve_.”

 

The balloon rose higher and higher and the policeman dropped to his knees. Just as the basket rose above the height of the towering black pillar, the statue bloomed, the bud splitting not into the petals of a flower, but a pair of mighty wings, stretching from one side of the square to the other and casting a shadow, even in the moonlit dim. The raven looked down over the lingering policemen, beak open in a silent caw, poised to take flight at any moment. Upon the hilt of the obsidian sword on which it stood was a star ruby bigger than a man’s head, and on the blade, two words, etched in bright, gleaming gold.

 

_Be free_.

 

The balloon drifted over the city on a warm south wind, and faded into the night.


	2. Before

**Before**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Many kinds of minds existed in the vastness of the world; the quick, fierce minds of animals, the slow, thoughtful minds of trees, the vastly varying intelligences of the earth and the sky and the sea. While all things under the stars spoke the same tongue, to command each of them required a different tone. No magician, no matter how powerful, could hope to command the air without a touch of laughter in their voice, nor fire without iron-clad confidence. Few magicians managed to master more than the one aspect to which they were most naturally inclined, and fewer still achieved dominion over the minds of thinking men.

 

Wren did it with an ease Hux had never seen. Not since the parting of the worlds. It was a wonder to behold.

 

The first of the pale twins knelt before him, inclining her head on a pencil-thin neck to allow him to place his fingers on the edge of her hairline without rising from the obsidian throne wrought in the shape of sweeping black feathers and keen corvid eyes Hux had crafted for him. The touch wasn’t strictly necessary, but occasions such as this called for a little pomp and circumstance. It wasn’t every day someone swore fealty to a new-crowned king.

 

“Florence Elaine Cosgrove,” Wren said, plucking the name from the surface of her mind like a pearl from shallow water, “do you swear allegiance to the court of the Raven King?”

 

“I do,” the girl whispered, her vaguely Russian-accented voice quavering.

 

“Do you swear to do no harm, even to those who would do harm to you, unless it serves the greater cause?”

 

“I do,” the girl whispered again, even softer than before.

 

Those laymen and little wizards gathered about would have noticed nothing — merely Wren’s fingers on her forehead and a moment of silence before he withdrew. To Hux, it was like standing in sunshine with his eyes closed, unable to see the shining light but feeling it washing over his skin nevertheless.

 

The words didn’t matter, he knew; they were as empty as all mortal oaths, as empty as the oaths of the soldiers who had sacked Badajoz six years ago. It was the magic that mattered. The little command Wren did not speak aloud, the quiet imposition of will, the tiny _change_ his subjects would never even notice until one of them tried to kill another with a cleaver and found their hand inexplicably stayed. Until one of them tried to steal from their neighbor and found they could not take the object from its place. Until one of them tried to disobey and found that no matter how they tried, they could not. And even then, most of them wouldn’t understand. They would think it nothing more than their own conscience, and praise their new king for leading them onto such a righteous path that they could no longer sin.

 

Florence rose and withdrew to join the other new converts to Wren’s cause, reaching out to brush fingers with her sister as the other twin moved to take her place at the base of Wren’s throne. While second girl knelt, Wren glanced over to where Hux stood against a spiraling black pillar, molasses eyes dewy and pleading. Hux suppressed a smile.

 

“Pull yourself together, you lump,” Hux chided jokingly. “Most men would give their right arm to sit in that chair and have a pretty girl kneel at their feet.”

 

Wren rolled his eyes, but said nothing, reaching out to place his fingertips on the girl’s forehead. Breaking into a grin, Hux settled back against the pillar. A few months ago, Wren would have broken character to argue.

 

Wren wasn’t a good king. Or at least, he wasn’t very _kingly_. He couldn’t give speeches worth a damn, even with Hux whispering the words into his ear; the first time he’d tried, he’d turned on his heel and ran off halfway through, flushed and panicked and mumbling nonsense about everyone looking at him. It had taken ten minutes and a very hurried orgasm to get him back in front of the crowd, though if Hux was honest with himself the orgasm hadn’t been entirely necessary. Still, he was getting better, little by little, learning to wear the mask of _king_ as well as he’d worn the mask of _warrior_ , though the latter was more comfortable by far.

 

 _One day,_ Hux was sure, watching Wren repeat the words of the oath again and again, _he will be a wonder._ My _wonder._ No thought had ever given him such overwhelming pride.

 

Finally, the last of their new subjects rose from her knees and went to stand with the rest of the crowd, greeted as all the others had been by a hug from Mitaka and much congenial patting by the other converts, though to Hux’s knowledge they’d all been strangers before stepping onto Mitaka’s balloon. Wren swallowed, somewhat thickly, and stood, tugging his embroidered black frock coat down in complete disregard for the enchantments Hux had woven into the fabric to help it keep its fit.

 

“I promised you freedom,” Wren recited, the way a child would the words of a play. “Freedom from hunger. Freedom from thirst. Freedom from fear. And I am a man of my word. In return, I ask for no more than your old masters did — trust, obedience and unwavering loyalty. Mitaka will show you to your rooms.”

 

For a moment, the newcomers didn’t move, staring at Wren in baffled expectation. Wren said nothing more, but coughed into his fist and sat back down, Mitaka cheerfully bustling the group down towards the winding corridor that lead deep into the black heart of the island and towards the bulk of their compound. A few glanced back — the little boy especially, dragged reluctantly along after his mother and still searching for fairies — but most just whispered to each other, fast friends in the way only compatriots could be. The moment the last of them disappeared around the corner, Wren let out a mighty sigh and sank back into his chair as if his bones had vanished along with them.

 

“You did well,” Hux said indulgently, sauntering over to perch on the raven-clawed arm of the throne. “Though you seem to have forgotten the rest of the speech. Again.”

 

Letting out a whining hum through his nose, Wren swung one of his legs up to rest in Hux’s lap. Without looking down, Hux tugged off his high leather boot and began working his fingers into the bunched muscle of Wren’s calf.

 

“Hate speeches,” Wren mumbled, rubbing the side of his foot against the slashed sleeve of Hux’s shirt. “If you want it done right, you can do it yourself.”

 

“I’m not the king,” Hux said, flicking Wren hard enough to make his foot twitch. “They’re not here for me.”

 

“What’s-his-name was,” Wren replied. “Little boy. The whole time I was in his head, it was just ‘wanna see a fairy, wanna see a fairy, wanna see a fairy’. Almost couldn’t find his name.”

 

“Which you promptly forgot.”

 

“Which I promptly forgot.” Wren smiled. “There are what, six hundred of them now? A thousand counting the soldiers. I can’t be expected to remember a thousand names.”

 

“You’re getting better at it,” Hux said, pushing the leg of Wren’s pants up to get to the stocking-clad flesh underneath. “Ensorcelling them. You’re not as tired as you were before, and there were more of them this time.”

 

Wren broke into a wide grin and spread his legs. “Does that mean I get a reward?”

 

“Yes,” Hux laughed, and leaned in for a kiss.

 

Wren’s legs were hooked over the arms of his throne and Hux was settled comfortably between them when a hesitant knock tapped against the ornate black-and-silver doors leading into the throne room. Wren didn’t even hear it, his head thrown back in a deep moan as Hux swallowed him down farther than any human throat could ever allow. Hux almost, almost ignored it, slowing the bobbing of his head and letting the warm human smell of Wren’s cock get the better of him before the knock came again, just as stuttering as the first.

 

Hollowing his cheeks, Hux pulled back to release Wren’s cock with a pop, giving the seeping red head one last lick before raising his fingers to his throat and asking, “What do you want?”

 

“You,” Wren groaned, fisting his hand in Hux’s hair and trying to push him back down. “Always you.”

 

Hux flicked the inside of Wren’s pale thigh as he let the message go. “Hush, you dullard.”

 

Wren looked down at Hux in flushed, slack-jawed confusion for a long, tense moment, long enough for Hux to begin to doubt that he’d truly heard a knock to begin with. Then there came a soft cough neither of them made.

 

“Uh… L-lord Ren, sir?” Poddleton’s gentle Irish accent said. “Miss Phasma’s back again, sir. She’s asking to see you straight away, sir. Iffin it’s not too much trouble. Now how do I—”

 

Wren’s eyes rolled back in his head and he let out a loud, tortured groan Poddleton must have been able to hear, even through the thick stone of the doors. Hux chuckled and ran his long nails down Wren’s subtly quivering thighs before pushing himself to his feet.

 

“A moment, Mr. Poddleton,” Hux said, handing Wren his trousers.

 

Pressing his fingers to his throat with one hand, Wren used the other to toss the trousers back from whence they came. “Make that five.”

 

By Hux’s count, it only took three.

 

“Sir!” Poddleton said as the door opened, cutting a neat salute. “Miss Phasma’s waiting for you in the war room, sir.”

 

“Captain,” Wren corrected, pushing past the red-faced soldier-turned magician and starting down the rounded corridor. “Not ‘miss’.”

 

“Oh,” Poddleton said, falling in behind as Hux, still naked and languorous and to the lesser man invisible, moved to follow. “ _Oh,_ dear, right, of course, I’m sorry, sir, I just— It shan’t happen again, sir.”

 

“Better not,” Wren replied, belatedly remembering to do up the top button of his trousers. “Phasma will tear you apart.”

 

Poddleton paled, though whether from Wren’s half-joke or the ethereal ripples of Hux’s passing, Hux couldn’t tell. The young man didn’t cross himself, but his hand rose, hovering in the air for an uncertain moment before dropping back to his side.

 

“He’s improving,” Hux observed idly as he paced bare-footed down the smooth stone floor cut into the tunnel. “He took a full minute to get the spell right last time.”

 

“You’re right, he is,” Wren replied, his eyes raking over Hux’s bare body before flicking back to the boy. “Fox says you’re improving.”

 

Poddleton went from white to flushed a bright cherry red, the color bleeding into his mismatched ears and down his throat. “Th— Thank you, sir. I’m… I’m doing my best.”

 

Of all the old Knights of Ren, only Poddleton showed any predilection for magic, and that only in such vanishingly small quantities that Hux sometimes wondered whether he was magical at all, or simply very good at throwing his voice. Still, messages needed to be run, and there was always laundry that needed doing, and Wren liked having him around, like a living keepsake. He was also a passable cook, which recommended him heartily to those inhabitants of their little warren who had an actual need to eat. Hux had personally never seen the appeal, but mortals did as mortals would.

 

“Any problems with our new friends?” Wren asked as they passed by the officer’s quarters; eight suites only marginally bigger than the ones they gave to the common folk, arrayed around a little common room in the middle. One day, each of the Knights would have a complex all their own, but building a structure that would stand the test of time took a lot of it, even under Hux’s strict persuasion, and the confines of Hrafnrokk were small.

 

“No, sir,” Poddleton said a little hesitantly. “I think they’re a little… _disappointed,_ sir. The old man kept asking where the magic city was.”

 

“Well, when I build it they’ll be the first to know,” Wren sighed as they rounded a corner and passed through another set of doors.

 

Though around the same size as the throne room, the war room could not have been more different. There were no ornate columns, no geometric reliefs on the walls, no onyx tiles covering the floor. Just bare volcanic stone, covered everywhere with dozens of maps of varying sizes; cities, coastlines, entire countries. The entire wall across from the double doors was taken up by one massive map of the world as a whole, in paper for now though it would one day gleam with gems and gold. Hux noted with some satisfaction that there were now eleven obsidian spikes driven into it, everywhere from New York to Paris to Peking and now London.

 

Then he looked at the table and saw the tall snaky woman in the sleek black and white dress smirking at him and conjured himself some clothes.

 

“Phasma!” Wren called as the second woman rose to her feet, stepping back from the stone table that dominated the center of the room to envelop Wren in a mutually crushing hug. Wren, grinning, slapped her on the back, holding onto her arm as he drew away. “You look dry. Tell me it’s good news.”

 

“Well, it’s not as bad as it could be,” Phasma replied guardedly. Wren’s face dropped. “Don’t give me that look. You knew what was going to happen when you absconded with an eighth of the British army.”

 

Heaving a sigh, Wren released Phasma’s arm and ambled over to flop into one of the high-backed driftwood chairs. “And I was having such a good day.”

 

“Apparently.” Bazine — or Nettle, as Phasma had taken to calling her, undoubtedly for her gracious and accommodating personality — swung her long legs up over the arm of her chair, conveniently located at the head of the table. The long slit of her gown parted to reveal her pale calves and a pair of bright red high-heeled riding boots. Hux refused to allow her the dignity of a glance.

 

“Tell me the worst part first,” Wren said as Phasma pulled a chair around to face his.

 

“There are several worst parts,” Phasma replied. Wren sighed again and began to knead his temples. “To start off with, you’re officially the most wanted man in Europe. And not just you. There are wanted posters of all of us plastered from here to the Balkans, even young Poddleton here. They’re calling us ‘traitors to the civilized world’. So we’d best start producing food of our own, because we’re not going to be buying any any time soon.”

 

For a moment, Wren just sat with his head in his hands. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a little glass egg, and whipped it at the wall. It shattered into a dozen glittering pieces, tinkling like rain as they fell.

 

“Alright,” he said calmly, running his hands over his face and sitting up straighter in his chair. “Tell me a better part.”

 

“The likenesses are genuinely terrible.”

 

“Well, there’s that.” Wren waved his hand and the shattered pieces of the egg floated back to the table. He began to pick at them, putting them together one tiny shard at a time. “Tell me you got _something_. I promised people three meals a day.”

 

“Well…” Phasma began cautiously. “About that.”

 

Wren paused in his work and looked up at her through his angled brows. “Don’t make me ask.”

 

Phasma didn’t reply, her small mouth pursed into a thin line. Hux’s stomach sank. Wren watched her for a moment, then let out an unsteady breath, sitting back in his chair.

 

“Was it her?” he asked.

 

“No,” Phasma answered immediately. “No, it wasn’t her. She and her fairy are still missing in action.”

 

 _Small mercies_ , Hux thought as Wren passed a hand through his mess of black hair. Though he knew, beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt, that Wren was his, he was still a jealous creature, and the farther the whore was from his little bird, the happier he was.

 

“Got a better look at him this time,” Bazine said into the silence, fiddling with the hem of her dress so it sat more fetchingly on her thighs. “That Mexican is remarkably attractive for a man. I wouldn’t say no.”

 

“You wouldn’t say no to _anyone_ ,” Phasma deadpanned.

 

“Of course I would,” Bazine replied blithely. “I said no to Richard the Third. Twice.”

 

As Phasma held back a smile, Wren picked up a shard and turned it in his fingers, watching the light reflect off the red-laced glass.

 

“We can’t feed a thousand people through the Kingsroads,” he mumbled, almost to himself. “And we’re running out of space. We can’t move people to the mainland six at a time. We need ships, and we need to keep them.”

 

“He has to be scrying us,” Phasma said in the same tone. “There’s no other way he could have known where we were going to be and when.”

 

“I wove wards into every inch of Hrafnrokk,” Hux said, feeling vaguely affronted, even though he knew there really was no other explanation. “Even a fairy would take months to break through them.”

 

“Perhaps there’s two,” Poddleton ventured.

 

The other four inhabitants of the room looked up at him. For a moment, there was only the dull, distant roar of the sea crashing against the rocks high above.

 

“Pardon?” Hux said.

 

“Well, there’s the black one, isn’t there,” Poddleton said, shifting uncomfortably on his feet and flushing at the sudden attention. “Couldn’t he have found this Mexican friend of theirs a fairy of his own, the way you did, Mr. Fox? That way there’d be two of them, and they could do it in half the time. Iffin that’s how it works, I wouldn’t rightly know.”

 

Poddleton looked down and shifted again, clasping his hands behind his back in an anxious sketch of parade rest, like a soldier who’d spoken out of turn. The quiet returned, deeper, more thoughtful. A shiver ran up Hux’s spine.

 

“That… isn’t stupid,” Bazine said, as if the very notion amazed her. “Well done, Peter, we might just make a wizard of you after all.”

 

Flushing even darker, Poddleton glanced up at her and flashed a small, crooked-toothed smile. “Th-thank you, ma’am.”

 

“It couldn’t be someone from Starkiller, could it?” Phasma asked, a worried line appearing between her pale eyebrows.

 

“With how nosy and desperate for news everyone is? Absolutely not,” Hux huffed. “Someone would have noticed. Besides, the other fairies outnumber us almost a hundred to one. Why recruit a traitor when you have an entire army at your back?”

 

“It doesn’t matter who they are,” Bazine said with a gesture. “The answer’s the same. Banish them back from whence they came and get on with our day.”

 

“Easier said than done,” Hux replied sharply. “A banishment would work on every fairy within a ten mile radius, including _us_.”

 

Bazine shrugged. “So our bargainers summon us back after.”

 

“Do you think we can take him in a fair fight?” Phasma asked Wren, the little crease still between her brows.

 

Wren paused, looking down at the glass shard between his fingers. After a moment, he fitted it back into the shattered egg and fused the lot back together, thin crystalline lines marking the places where it had been broken, this time and many others.

 

“Guiomar couldn’t.”

 

Phasma bowed her head. Poddleton crossed himself and muttered a quiet benediction. Hux, for once, didn’t begrudge him. It would take a petty little man, to deny a prayer for the dead.

 

“Not to speak ill of the deceased,” Bazine said, “but Guiomar wasn’t much of a magician at the end of the day. And maybe, _maybe_ , this pretty Mexican could take _one_ of you. But Phas, you and Wren together? You’ll kick his shapely arse into next Tuesday, no question.”

 

The line between Phasma’s brows vanished and she corners of her eyes crinkled, a small smile pulling at her pale lips. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

 

“Oh, this isn’t a democracy.” Bazine swung her legs back under the table and sat forward, looking at Phasma with a dark-lipped smirk. “This is a dictatorship, I am you queen, and this metaphor got away from me a bit, I apologize.”

 

Phasma snorted a laugh, covering her mouth with a hand. Even Wren smiled a bit. Hux had to admit, for all her faults, Bazine knew how to lighten a mood.

 

“I would feel better if it were five against one,” Hux said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against Wren’s chair, “but we can’t leave the compound undefended. Do you think we could leave Gaius and Ozymandias to guard it alone?”

 

“Gaius and Ozymandias? Sure,” Bazine said with a little laugh. “Silver and Isis? Not a chance. We’d have to leave Reed here to keep them from killing each other.”

 

“You and me, then,” Phasma said to Wren.

 

“You and me,” Wren agreed, slipping the egg back into his pocket and rising to his feet. “Let’s do it.”

 

 

 

 

_(Author’s Note: I have not read any of the stuff with Bazine. I know her purely from the movie, and if I want to make her sweet and snarky and adorable, I will. So there.)_

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

_(Author’s Note the Second: The geography described herein is not accurate. If that bothers you, then I am sorry, but in later chapters I calculate the precise amount of wheat it would take to feed a thousand people, so get over it.)_

The goal was simple; get a ship to Reykjavik, fill it with food, and sail it back to Hrafnrokk. In the last two months, between attacks and problems on shore, they’d managed it precisely twice.

 

Ben stood on a raised spurt of black rock at the very edge of the incoming tide, looking across the cold grey-blue water to the sloping green fields and dark snow-capped mountains that protected them. He could see a city there, one day, full of black towers grown from the stone and people who’d never had to worry about their next meal, no matter how little farmland there was or how long the cruel winters lasted. Thinking about it was almost meditative. Here there would be a spire filled with brightly colored windows, there a plaza for festivals and parades, with a fountain and a statue of a raven on an obsidian sword. Trees, everywhere, despite the thin soil and dim latitude. Magically heated streets in winter to melt away the snow and breezes brought down from the mountains in summer. And across the water, where he was now, the palace Fox had always wanted to build for him.

 

The fairy stood beside him, on the surface of the water, watching Phasma, Mitaka, Ozymandias, Gaius, and their respective fairy partners build a ship out of driftwood. They’d done it before, three times, but each time always took longer than the last as the crew learned to better simulate the work of man. It would do no good to be too obviously magical — that would only paint a target on their backs, for the law as well as the Mexican.

 

On five separate occasions now, the man had shown up out of nowhere, descending from a clear blue sky like a bolt of lightning to smash their ships with swirling storms cast from his hands. The first time was the worst. Ben and the volunteers he’d poached from the British army were crossing over from Britain in five commandeered ships when a wall of wind had slammed into the sea, raising a wave fifteen feet high. The ships floundered, and if it hadn’t been for Mitaka’s quick thinking with the icebergs and the tide dragging them to the jagged shore of the island that had become their home, all eight hundred men might have drowned instead of only half, and all the magicians with them.

 

That had been a bad day. Not as bad as the day he looked up and saw Rey with him, dressed in cream and white with stray strands of her soft brown hair flying in the whipping wind. He’d hoped, in a blind, unacknowledged sort of way, that she would understand what he was trying to do.

 

Something cracked and a significant portion of the ship slid into the water, sending up a massive splash that soaked Ozymandias to the bone and almost capsized the little chunk of ice upon which he stood.

 

“Her fault!” he shouted, pointing his gangly finger at Isis even as he struggled to keep his balance. “ _She_ made it too _thin_! _I_ told her to make it _thicker_ , but she _never_ listens to me!”

 

The little brown fairy woman glared at him with her iron grey eyes, kicking at the water under her feet and sending up a spray to soak him again. He tried to juke out of the way, but his fine black slippers slid out from under him and he fell hard, slipping halfway into the sea before he managed to catch the edge with scrabbling fingers.

 

“It couldn’t take the bloody weight, you moron,” Isis shouted over his curses, kicking at him again. “ _You_ made it too _thick_.”

 

“Now, now,” Gaius grumbled, leaning over the bulwark of the unfinished ship and holding his hands out placatingly, the droopy sleeves of his robes pulled up past his elbows like wrinkled skin. “There’s no need to fight, remember what happened last time—”

 

Isis kicked at the water a third time, and although Gaius was a good ten feet above her, the water still struck him full in the face, drenching his white beard into a scraggly mess. As he fell back, Silver appeared in front of him like a gleam of hard white light, their ivory hair writhing and their heart-shaped lips drawn back in a silent hiss.

 

“It’s alright!” Gaius stammered, raising his hand towards his fairy companion, but Isis was already running across the water and straight up the side of the ship, her long black leather coat flaring behind her. Silver’s bare feet curled around the icy railing and they pounced, striking Isis in the chest and driving them both under the water, Silver’s white robe swirling behind them like the mantle of an octopus.

 

“Well,” Mitaka said with a sigh, coming to the edge of the deck and peering down into the sea, “so much for getting this done before noon.”

 

“Nettle, Reed,” Phasma called from her place up in the mast, “kill the idiots, with you?”

 

“With pleasure,” Nettle called back, and dove from a spar, disappearing beneath the water without so much as a ripple.

 

In the end, they did get it done before noon, though just barely.

 

By the time the handful of soldiers and volunteers Ben had selected to act as their crew had boarded, a cold wind had begun to blow in from the northwest, bringing with it a stretch of thick grey clouds that marred the horizon like a dark thought. Ben stood on the prow, staring at the clouds, then at the city that wasn’t there. Maybe they could bring in some foreign stone, he thought, Italian marble and Egyptian alabaster so the towers could be white instead of black. They wouldn’t need much, just a few shards, like the seeds to grand trees.

 

Without speaking, Fox came up to stand beside him. For a moment, they just stood, shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the world. Then Fox slid his hand into Ben’s. The electric tingle of his skin never got old.

 

The ship set out, curving around the hook of the Icelandic coast that protected Hrafnrokk from the worst of the winter storms and setting out towards Reykjavik. A full hour passed. The storm clouds loomed nearer, darker, threatening rain, but they looked natural, just another part of the oncoming autumn.

 

“Maybe he won’t come,” Ben mumbled under his breath. “Maybe he gave up, like Rey did.”

 

Fox squeezed his hand, but said nothing.

 

A few minutes later, the wind reversed, blowing up hot from the south. Ben sighed. So much for hope.

 

Scanning the sky, he left Fox at the prow and paced back to the circle of glyphs carved into the deck. The Mexican’s ability to fly irked him. He’d been trying to learn for months, but despite all of Fox’s instruction, he could barely keep himself from falling, let alone raise into the air. From all reports, the Mexican was a master of it, gracefully flitting to and fro as if he were a fairy himself. Fox assured him that that happened sometimes, that it was just the nature of magic, but Ben couldn’t help but feel… less.

 

“Do you see him?” he called to Fox as the wind grew warmer and warmer, until Ben’s embroidered wool coat felt warm and sticky on his shoulders.

 

“Not yet,” Fox replied, stepping up onto the bowsprit.

 

“Come out, you guttersnipe!” Bazine shouted into the wind. “You gutless poltroon! Come out and play!”

 

“I see him!” Phasma called. “East by—”

 

A wall of wind hit the ship from the starboard side, crewmen skittering as the deck began to tip. Ben looked to Fox, but the fairy was already gone, flit to port and pushing back against the onslaught, ruby-studded shoes braced against thin air. Groaning, the ship slowly leveled. Wind ripped at the crewmen’s black uniforms and thrashed in Ben’s hair. He still couldn’t see anyone, glancing around wildly and squinting against the wind. Then he saw Nettle throw a bolt of green fire almost straight up.

 

“Son of a bitch!” Ben shouted to nobody. “How’d he get on top of us?”

 

The Mexican hovered in the air as if it were water, rolling and pushing off from nothing to avoid the flames. He wasn’t what Ben had expected — smaller, for one, wearing a coat and trousers like a normal man — and he appeared to be alone. Ben knew how little that meant.

 

With no earth to control, Ben turned to the cold, gathering a ball of crackling mist in his palm and flinging it at the man. Twisting out of the way, the Mexican sent a concentrated gust of air in return, missing Ben by a hair but catching a crewman and tossing him backwards over the bulwark.

 

“Fox!” Ben shouted.

 

In an instant, Fox came flying back up over the edge, gripping the sailor by the back of his jacket. The boat began to tip again and Fox dropped the sailor unceremoniously, flitting back to his post.

 

“The spell!” Phasma shouted over the howl of the wind.

 

Without bothering to call back, Ben dropped to his knees and drew a silver knife from his boot. The wind picked up and the cracking of strained wood ran through the ship like lightning.

 

“Fuck you!” Nettle screamed into the gale, just as Ben found the unfinished glyph and scratched a deep, hard line.

 

Ben felt it immediately; a lurch, as if his heart had skipped a beat, and a vague feeling of loneliness that made his chest ache. He belatedly realized that this was the first time he and Fox had been parted since their reunion almost a year ago. Anger and renewed hat sparked in his chest. The Mexican was going to pay for this.

 

Then he realized, much more immediately, that the deck was tipping.

 

“Phasma?” He shouted over the continued storm, pushing himself to his feet as sailors ran around him.

 

If Phasma replied, he couldn’t hear it, her voice drowned by the bellowing of the ship. It tilted, and tilted, and then began to roll, sailors scrambling to hold on while others flung themselves into the sea in hopes of getting clear of the rigging before it turned. The heavily worked wood couldn’t take the pressure and with a shriek, the ship cracked.

 

Ben hit the water hard. The cold of it stole the breath from his lungs, froze his muscles tight so he couldn’t help but sink. After far too long he finally started kicking, making it to the surface only to find himself _inside_ the ship, the shattered hull rolling on top of him and trapping him in a quickly filling pocket of air still lit by the oil lamps swinging wildly from the beams. There were seven men trapped with him, wailing in despair as they realized what had happened.

 

Taking a handful of deep breaths, Ben raised his hand, calling for the wood to _open_. It split like an opening mouth and more icy water began to pour in from above. Ben cursed.

 

“Come to me!” he shouted over the rush of the water. “Hold on!”

 

The sailors obeyed, grabbing on to any inch of him they could find, as well as to each other. The bubble of air disappeared rapidly as the ship sunk around him, lanterns going out one by one as they sank beneath the surface.

 

“Take a deep breath,” Ben said, and closed his eyes.

 

With a word, water crawled up over them, forming a bubble whose outer shell hardened into thick, crystalline ice. The men around him began to panic, grabbing at him and kicking, bubbles streaming upfrom their mouths, and for a moment, Ben couldn’t concentrate. Then the bubble shot upwards like a bullet, smashing through the hull and cracking as it did, their remaining momentum propelling them to the surface.

 

In their desperation to get to the air, the sailors holding onto him shoved him down, shoved him under. His lungs burned as he struggled to push them away, too terrified of drowning them himself to move them with magic. He kicked as hard as he could, shrugged off his sodden coat, began to flail as the cold ate into his bones.

 

A hand plunged down into the water and grabbed his arm, pulling him up onto a floating sheet of conjured ice. He breathed deep and hard, coughing to clear the saltwater from his throat. Phasma looked at him and said nothing.

 

When he looked up at where the Mexican had been, as far as he could see, there was nothing but grey sky.

 

When the current and a little magic finally brought them back to the island and they could do a proper head count, there were four fewer of them than there had been. The magicians who’d remained behind went about setting magical fires, packing people into the throne room where they could huddle together under conjured blankets. Poddleton disappeared into the communal kitchen and started making tea in bulk.

 

Phasma and Ben trudged their way down the tunnel to the officer’s quarters, collapsing onto the driftwood benches still dripping.

 

“Well,” she said after a silence that seemed to last forever, “that could have gone better.”

 

Ben huffed a laugh.

 

Half an hour later, Ben settled onto the edge of his bed, stripped down to his skin and shivering, a candle in his hand. He lit it and said the words.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Nothing happened the second time. Or the third. Not even when he used Fox’s true name.

 

Just as he was starting to panic, there came a knock at his door. Throwing a blanket around his waist, he opened it to find Phasma, her eyes wide, her breath coming fast, and a candle in her hand.

 

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The spell hit Hux like a sledgehammer. He was ready for it, but still, it knocked the breath from his lungs and left him staggered. So it was that he didn’t immediately recognize where he was.

 

The walls of Starkiller Keep’s ballroom were not so steep, nor uniform, patched here and there with black marble swirled with red where the old masonry had crumbled away. The lights were rectangular, not ovals. And even when all five bargainers were asleep, there were never more than twenty people in it. This room held a thousand, every one of them staring at him.

 

 _The Court_ , Hux thought. _Why the hell am I_ here _?_

Then he looked up, to the top of the pyramid in the center of the room.

 

The throne wasn’t empty anymore.

 

Hux’s heart stopped.


	3. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (You guys get two chapters tonight because I am a doof and accidentally published this before chapter two so have fun I guess)

**After**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

As Ben ran down the hallway, he stepped on the edge of the blanket, fabric tearing free from his hands as he stumbled through the throne room doors, pale and shaking. Two dozen heads turned to look at him at once.

 

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Ozymandias asked, earning him an absent smack from Isis.

 

Ben swallowed hard. The room was full of sailors, joined now by their wives, their children, parents covering their children’s eyes at his nakedness as others huffed nervous, hesitant laughs. Ben’s throat closed and his face burned.

 

“Ren, what’s going on?” Mitaka asked, standing from where he had been crouched applying bandages and salve to a wound.

 

“Need you,” Ben managed, his voice rough. “Need all of you, now.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The King looked as the King always had; humanoid, but only anatomically, his skin corpse pale and his features blurred and scarred as if by knife and fire. His eyes were empty black pits gleaming with the faintest of distant stars. He was wearing a black frock coat and trousers, which Hux found exceedingly odd, but his long white claw-like nails curled around the arms of his throne the way they always had, and the slightly crooked way he held his head was unchanged in the centuries since his last appearance. Beside him on a black marble plinth was a wide silver bowl.

 

By every custom and courtesy, Hux should have dropped to his knees. He didn’t. He stood, and stared, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide, and wondered if this was what mortal dreams were like.

 

“Hux,” the King rumbled in his deep heart-of-the-mountain voice, the sound resonating in Hux’s chest like the prelude to an earthquake. “Bazine.”

 

“My— My King,” Bazine stuttered, falling to her knees as if her long legs could no longer support her weight. “You— You have returned, my heart sings, I—”

 

The King waved his hand and Bazine abruptly fell silent, bowing her head like a cowed dog. Once again, those star-filled eyes turned to Hux, and Hux had forgotten what it felt like, to stand before that gaze. There was terror there, yes, memories of atrocities long past, but a deep yearning as well, to please him, to be found worthy. To be _enough_. Hux had always been a good servant, had earned the quietest slip of a smile more than once, and _oh_ , how the King would be proud of him now.

 

Only, he realized, he was still standing. He dropped like a stone, and when he spoke, his voice trembled.

 

“My King.”

 

He wanted to say more. Apologize for being tardy, both in coming and in kneeling. Wanted to explain where he had been, all he had done, espousing his victories like a child babbling to a long-absent parent. Wanted to ask why the King had not called, to express joy in his return as Bazine had done. He found he could not. He could only bow his head and hope the King could see the flurry of unexpected emotion bubbling in Hux’s chest the way he could see everything else.

 

 _He had returned_.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

As the magicians and their fairies ran down the hallway into the war room, Phasma stopped her pacing, clasping her wrists behind her back so tightly her hand went white.

 

“It’s not working,” she said quickly, desperately, striding up to Reed even before he had passed completely through the doors. “The summons, it isn’t working.”

 

Reed’s face screwed up into affronted confusion. “What do you mean, it isn’t working?”

 

“She means it isn’t fucking working!” Ben snapped, beginning to pace himself. Poddleton handed him the discarded blanket and he roughly fastened it around his waist. “The banishment, could it have hurt them? Is it permanent?”

 

Reed’s frown deepened. “What? No. The spell was destroyed along with the ship, which we worked very hard on, by the way.”

 

Ben had never hated anyone more.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“Where are the rest of my wayward flock?” the King asked, the way a grandfather might ask after his wandering grandchildren.

 

“The mortal world, my King,” Hux managed to reply. “And Starkiller Keep. I can fetch—”

 

“There’s no need,” the King said with another wave of his hand. “They will return in time.”

 

Hux felt the magic in the King’s gesture the way he’d felt Wren tampering with the minds of his subjects, a kind of warm tingling light playing over his skin, only more concentrated this time, like sunlight through a lens, directed squarely at him. What the spell had done, he couldn’t tell, and a thread of panic wormed its way through his joy, tinged in confusion and a kind of aching hurt. Did the King not trust him to do as he was bid?

 

“I have a bargainer, my King,” Hux said, hoping to explain his absence, to earn the King’s favor, to earn back what confidence he had apparently lost. “A young magician of great potential. I can bring him—”

 

The King waved his hand and Hux’s throat closed.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Before he knew what he was doing, he’d grabbed one of the heavy grown-driftwood chairs and smashed it against the wall, over and over until it was kindling in his hands. Splinters and tatters of torn maps rained down around his bare feet, and Gaius scrambled back so quickly he almost knocked Ozymandias over. Mitaka shouted Ben’s name, but Ben ignored him, until there was no more chair left to smash.

 

Tossing the last piece of the chair onto the ground, Ben took a deep breath, his voice coming calm. “He did something. The Mexican trapped them, warded them. Kept them away somehow.”

 

“That’s impossible,” Reed said carefully, his long hands raised. “No human skill can contain a fairy.”

 

“And no-one can command one but the King,” Ben snapped back. Reed flinched, remembering. “What do we do? How do we get them back?”

 

The three fairies looked at one another, saying nothing for a long, painful moment. Then Reed piped up again.

 

“Have you tried using their true names?”

 

Ben was going to kill him.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“ _Come_ ”, the King commanded, the word wrapped in so much magic Hux’s head ached. Confused, frightened, Hux stood — only he did not. His knees would not rise from the marble.

 

“My King?” he asked, looking up with bewildered blue eyes.

 

The King turned his hand. Curled his fingers. Beckoned.

 

“ _Come.”_

A dreadful weight settled on Hux’s shoulders. He’d done nothing wrong. There had been no call to return, nor a command to stay here in the Last Keep. There had never been an order to gather in the first place; they’d all simply converged together as their bargainers died and they found themselves alone.

 

Hux could not deny a command, but he found himself fighting against it anyway, his hands clenching into fists. He was a proud thing, and _he had done nothing wrong._

“ _Come_ ,” the King said again, and, cheeks burning, Hux began to crawl.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Phasma stepped into Ben’s path before he could reach the fairy and wrap his hands around Reed’s scrawny pale throat.

 

“Yes, we tried,” she said, far more diplomatically than Ben would have if he hadn’t been too angry to open his mouth. “That didn’t work either.”

 

“That’s impossible,” Reed said again as Ben turned around, walked back over to the table, and picked up another chair. “A fairy cannot refuse the call of their true name.”

 

“What could keep them, then?” Phasma asked, voice raised slightly over the shattering of wood.

 

“I don’t—” Reed began, then repeated louder, “I don’t know. It’s never happened before, except…”

 

Ben paused mid-strike. His heart froze in his chest.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The spell didn’t allow Hux to stop at the base of the pyramid, but forced him onward and upward, step by painful step. His brethren stared, and his brethren laughed, tiny snickers echoing in the cavernous room. Hate flared in Hux’s gut, and shame. He still didn’t understand. Bazine had been allowed to stay where she was, and what had he done that she hadn’t?

 

Finally, he knelt at the King’s feet, so close he could smell him, stagnant water and iron and ozone. Somehow he’d managed to forget how _massive_ the King was, his calf as big around as both of Hux’s put together and still bone thin, like a starving shark, all cartilage and teeth. Somehow, Hux was reminded of the day before, kneeling before Wren in his raven throne and taking him deep into his mouth. Bile rose in the back of his throat.

 

The King hummed, a sound that could have been angry or affectionate or judging. Hux’s ears stung and his bones rattled. He bowed his head, but the King reached out, hooked a claw under Hux’s chin, and lifted his face until those empty eyes were the only things Hux could see. They consumed him.

 

When the King spoke, the words buzzed in every bone, every organ, every scrap of skin Hux had, shaking him apart one sound at a time.

 

“I always knew you would be the one to fail me.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“Except when the King left,” Isis finished, her voice barely a breath. “This is what happened before. The summons stopped working. The names didn’t work anymore. This is what happened. This is _exactly_ what happened.”

 

No-one spoke. Silver took Gaius’ wizened hand in their dainty one and clenched it so tightly the old man winced.

 

“You don’t think…” Reed eventually said. “It… It couldn’t have…”

 

Isis looked at him and slowly shook her head, her long black hair rustling on her shoulders. “It has to be. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Hux’s breath caught in his throat.

 

He didn’t understand. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

 

 _He hadn’t done anything wrong_.

 

The King hadn’t called. Hux couldn’t have known. Wouldn’t be here now if not for the banishment. It wasn’t wrong to leave the Last Keep, it wasn’t wrong to have a bargainer, or even to love them — that had happened countless times over the years, though never, Hux thought, with the intensity with which he loved Wren — and it certainly wasn't wrong to conquer, to build, to _make_ , for himself and for the glory of Faerie and his King. Everything Hux had done in the past sixteen years, the past three hundred, welled in his mind as he searched for something, _anything_ , to explain those words.

 

Then he realized.

 

He’d given it back. Wren’s finger. He’d taken it, and he’d given it back.

 

He’d broken his contract.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“No,” Reed said, clasping his hands behind his back and beginning too pace, quick on his long legs. “The summons stopped because the King left. He can’t have left twice over.”

 

“Maybe he died,” Isis replied, wrapping her arms around herself. Ozymandias gently placed his hand between her shoulders. “Maybe all this was just an alignment of the spheres, and now it’s gone. Maybe… whatever reason the universe had for allowing the summons again has been accomplished. Maybe this was all there was ever supposed to be.”

 

“No,” Reed snipped again.” We haven’t even started. It isn’t fair.”

 

An ache settled heavily in Ben’s chest. The ruined chair clattered to the floor.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Horror knotted in his stomach. He’d forgotten, put it behind him, pushed it out of his mind like the rest of those five terrible years. He had Wren back, and so all was well, but all was _not_ well, he had broken his contract and there was no part of that sentence that did not hurt.

 

“Forgive me,” he breathed. “My King—”

 

The claw under his chin pressed up, snapping his teeth together. Heat trickled down his throat.

 

“You believe you deserve forgiveness?” the King asked, in the same kindly, grandfatherly rumble as before. Hux would have taken anger in an instant.

 

He didn’t reply. Couldn’t. Tears welled in his eyes, but he refused to let them fall, not when the King was watching him. Not when the King could see.

 

The claw came away, dripping golden red onto the black marble as it returned to curl around the arm of the throne. The King sat back and looked away, over the assembled fairies, disregarding him like a crushed insect. This time when Hux bowed his head, the King did not stop him.

 

“Dance,” the King said, and waved his bloody hand.

 

Hux remained where he was. Blood ran down his throat and dripped from his chin, hot as the tears he could no longer hold back. More blood pooled around his hands, seeping out under his nails.

 

They had heard. Every one of them. This was who he was now. The fairy who failed.

 

Again.

 

He’d wanted it to stop. He’d just wanted it to stop. He’d wanted to be free of Wren, free of the pain of watching him drift away, free of the heartbreak. He couldn’t stand it, feeling that way, forever.

 

This was worse. And this time, there was no contract to break.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“We can’t go back,” Isis said, a thread of panic edging into her voice. “We can’t go back, I’m not leaving, I’m not going to spend another three hundred bloody years doing the bloody _basse danse_.”

 

“We’ll stay here while they sleep,” Reed agreed, pacing quicker than ever.

 

“What about us?” Mitaka asked. “Is it safe to fall asleep? Should we try to keep ourselves awake?”

 

“Our bargainers never had problems before,” Reed reassured him, “but we still don’t know for certain—”

 

“What else could it be!” Isis shouted. “It’s _over,_ Mhera! It was beautiful, and it’s over.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

An age passed.

 

Hux could have stopped the bleeding. Healed his wounds. He didn’t. He deserved the pain, in his palms and his chin and his aching knees. It was easier to feel that pain than the rest.

 

He almost didn’t hear the voice at first, his mind caught in a litany of _I failed him_ and _He always knew_ and _It was always going to be me_. Wren’s ritual was sloppier than usual, his voice exhausted, and it took a moment for Hux to remember why.

 

Images flooded into his mind. Wren hurt, Wren bleeding, Wren dying, calling out to him with his last breath. Wren defeated, Wren captured, Wren mourning or broken, their plans crumbling like so much ash. Hux answered, without hesitation.

 

Only he didn’t.

 

Now he knew what that spell had done.

 

The King’s eyes slid back towards him, sparking as Hux’s breath came heavy, his stomach churning and arms shaking. He tried again, but he couldn’t flee to the human world any more than he could stand.

 

The King reached out again, threaded his blood-stained claw through Hux’s hair in a parody of everything gentle, everything kind.

 

“Traitor,” he said, calm as ever, as if Hux wasn’t worth the effort of being angry.

 

Hux shuddered and his breath hitched in the first of many silent sobs.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The others fell silent for a while, then began to bicker again, Reed arguing over and over that they didn’t know for sure, that they couldn’t be certain, that it was _impossible_ , and Isis saying again and again, _it was the only thing that made sense_. Mitaka and Gaius joined in, asking questions; did the summons stop all at once, did they know for certain it was the King’s departure that caused it, how long could they stay in the mortal realm before they had to return. Ben listened, but only heard one thing.

 

 _Fox wasn’t coming back_.

 

After a while, he drifted away. Phasma and Silver watched him go. Through the hallways he went, past the officer’s quarters, down the hall to the room at the very end, where he and Fox had made their home. He lay down on their bed, pressed his face into the pillow, breathed in the scent of strawberries and warm fur and rain.

 

If Fox couldn’t come to him, he would go to Fox.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Wren called him, over, and over, and over. Called his true name. And Hux couldn’t come.

 

He had to, _had to_ , Wren needed him and his true name could not be denied, but the King’s magic held him fast to the marble, to this realm, to this misery. He had to, couldn’t, every second sharpening the contradiction until it felt like a red-hot knife sawing him in two. It was unbearable and it _wouldn’t stop_.

 

Distantly, he was aware of screaming. Bazine’s voice — ‘ _Fuck you, you bastard, let me go to her you son of a bitch, I hate you’_ — and his own, wordless, keening. Wren’s was more important; worried, then afraid, then desperate, each word plunging the knife deeper into Hux’s flesh. He felt like he was coming apart, skin flayed away, bones clawing under his muscle like living things. _Stop_ , he begged in his mind, _Wren, stop, please, stop_.

 

Eventually, he did. Hux collapsed into a gasping heap, shuddering waiting to hear his name, _Hux, Hux, come to me, Hux._ As the silence stretched, he sobbed.

 

 _When you call, I will come_ , Hux had promised, years and years ago. He had meant it with all his heart.

 

He lay in a pool of his own blood, curled his knees up to his chest, and wished fairies could die.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

An hour later, Ben ran back the way he had come.

 

“He’s gone,” he said breathlessly as the others looked up at the booming of the doors. “Fox is gone.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Hux felt Wren come. He felt Wren go.

 

He was glad. He didn’t want Wren to see him like this. Wanted Wren to remember him as strong and vibrant, not broken. Not the failure. He couldn’t bear it, for Wren to think he was a failure. Not again.

 

The King leaned forward, grabbed Hux by the back of his jerkin, lifted him up like an over-sized doll. Hux’s legs came under him more out of habit than any intention on his part. His bloody hands gripped the hem of his jerkin and tugged it tight, as if that mattered. As if there were any face left to save.

 

“Dance,” the King said, pushing him towards the stairs.

 

On tottering legs, Hux went down. Fairies stared at him, some smirking, others wide-eyed. Most couldn’t, wouldn’t look at him. No-one offered to partner with him, but swirled by, gracefully sweeping along in the strange modern dance Wren had tried to teach him.

 

 _Lovely,_ Hux thought. _I’m going to make a fool of myself_. The thought almost made him laugh.

 

A woman stepped in front of him. For a moment, he didn’t recognize her, his mind a fuzz that saw big brown eyes and triple-looped hair and a simple cream gown and couldn’t assemble them into a living thing. Just parts, like he was. Parts held together by nothing but the memory of pride.

 

“Fox,” Rey said gently, reaching out to touch his bloody hand. “I’m so sorry—”

 

He yanked his hand away.

 

“I don’t want your pity,” he spit, tears still on his cheeks. “Go back to shagging your sheep, you pathetic little whore.”

 

She slapped him hard and stormed away.


	4. February

**February**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Ben lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.

 

Fox’s scent had faded from the sheets long ago. But if Ben unfocused his eyes, let his mind drift, he could almost believe it was still there.

 

Someone knocked at his door. Swallowing, he pressed his fingers to his throat.

 

“What do you want?”

 

“I brought you supper,” Poddleton’s voice replied quietly. “Beef stew and buns with butter.”

 

Ben’s stomach growled. “Leave it at the door.”

 

Poddleton paused. “Yes, sir.”

 

Ben didn’t get up.

 

Six months.

 

Six months, eleven days, four hours.

 

It wasn’t five years.

 

It was harder.

 

At least then, he’d known where Fox _was_. At least then he’d had hope. Now he lived half in a dream, spending his nights searching through the endless wild beyond the walls of Starkiller Keep and his days going through the empty motions of living. He ate, sometimes, dressed, sometimes, left their room solely to spend a few minutes pretending he would return to find Fox curled up under the black silk sheets of their bed or sitting at the driftwood table playing with the little glass fox Ben had made him all those years ago. The stab of disappointment when he opened the doors and found the room empty wasn’t worth the brief moment of hope, but he did it anyway, like a child scratching an itchy wound and tearing it open again, over and over and over.

 

Some days he thought about taking to the Kingsroads. In their desperation to explain what was going on, the fairies had dredged up all sorts of old rumors — that in the heart of Faerie there existed a dying tree no-one had ever seen whose sap ran through all things and bestowed magic and life upon everything it touched; that magic was not a static thing, but flowed between the spheres like a tide, greater now and then lesser as the unseen moon waned; that there was an ancient Road, the first Road, that stretched between the worlds and linked them together, and could take fairy or man from one to the other in the fullness of their being, not only in the image of their soul. That was how the King left, Isis theorized, for how else could he leave without a bargainer, without a summons, without a link?

 

Neither Isis nor Reed had ever found that Road, nor knew of any fairy who had. Reed didn’t even think it existed, or if it did, that it was unfindable, warded somehow, against any and all who would look for it.

 

“He _must_ have warded it against man and fairy both!” he shouted at Isis during one particularly heated argument, his long-fingered hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. “If we could pass through willy-nilly there would be no balance, there would be no need for bargains—”

 

“The King is _gone_!” she shouted back with a sharp sweeping gesture that sent cups and plates flying off the dinner table. “Wards can be broken! If there’s _any way—_ ”

 

And around and around it went.

 

It didn’t matter, Ben knew in the pit of his stomach. If Fox had been trapped in Starkiller Keep, if he simply could not be summoned, the way it had been three hundred years ago, Ben would have found that Road and gone to him in an instant, spent all the time there was with him, just as he had promised. But Fox was not trapped in Starkiller Keep. He was somewhere else, somewhere he couldn’t escape from, trapped between the worlds, or…

 

Ben didn’t dare form that thought in words. Fairies couldn’t die.

 

_Knock knock_.

 

“Just take it,” Ben mumbled, his fingers at his throat. “I’m not hungry.”

 

“You sure?” replied an unfamiliar male voice. “It smells really, really good.”

 

For a moment, Ben just lay there. Then he sat up and went to find his trousers.

 

When he opened the door, the man on the other side was in the middle of stuffing half a bun into his mouth, looking up at Ben like a kid caught in the sugar bowl. He held up his finger and chewed faster.

 

The closest Ben had ever come to the Mexican had been the day of the fight, and he hadn’t been paying overly much attention to the man’s features. Nettle was right — he _was_ handsome, in a dusky, rakish sort of way, his black hair wavy and well-kept and his eyes surprisingly old for such a young man. They gleamed a strange coppery orange when the light caught them, so dark the rest of the time they were almost black.

 

“Sorry,” the man said through a full mouth once he’d swallowed enough bun to speak. “Couldn’t resist.”

 

Ben didn’t say anything, but stepped backwards, holding the door open. Cradling the tray of food in one arm, the man stepped inside and looked around.

 

“Okay,” he said, gulping down the rest of the bun, “this looks _way_ worse in person.”

 

Once, this little round room had been neat, orderly, with the silver-framed bed on one side and the driftood table and chairs on the other, ebony bookshelves and cupboards lining the walls, a glass enclosure set into one wall for the fox. Now clothes and tattered books lay scattered over the polished obsidian floor amidst shattered shards of black wood, torn paper, discarded clothing. The bed had been shoved away from the wall in a fit of anger, the feather mattress half slid off and the sheets and pillows torn to pieces that gathered around the edges of the room like snow.

 

“Took you long enough,” Ben grumbled as he retrieved the table and chairs from where they’d been tossed against the now-chipped stone wall and setting them more or less back in their place. “I left that message weeks ago.”

 

“Burned into your giant table, yeah, I saw,” the Mexican said, blowing a stray feather kicked up by their movement out of his face as he set the tray down. “Very subtle. Kind of threatening. The words ‘talk to me’ in enormous flaming letters kind of puts a guy off, you know?”

 

Ben lowered himself onto one of the chairs. It wobbled. “Yet here you are.”

 

“What can I say?” the man shrugged as he settled into a wobbly chair of his own. “I’m curious. It’s not every day a psychopathic warlord invites you for tea and scones.”

 

Instead of answering, Ben reached out and took the remaining bun, tearing the bottom off and dunking it in the thick stew. It tasted just as good as it smelled.

 

“So,” the Mexican said after half a dozen heartbeats of silence. “I’m Poe. Nice to, you know.”

 

The man — Poe, Ben supposed — reached out across the table. Ben didn’t take his hand, swallowing before he replied.

 

“Kylo Ren.”

 

“Yeah,” Poe said with a thin slice of a dazzling smile, taking his hand back. “I know. Rey told me all about you.”

 

At the mention of her name, Ben paused, resisting the urge to scratch his bare shoulder. “She did?”

 

“Oh yeah,” Poe replied, breaking into a grin. “Do you really put honey in your eggs?”

 

Blood rushed to Ben’s face and he looked down, tearing the top half of the bun in half and shoving it into the bowl. The thought of the two of them sitting around a fire and gossiping about him, _laughing_ at him, made anger rise in his throat like bile.

 

Poe watched him eat without complaint or comment, his expression slowly sliding into a sly, wan little smile. He knew why he was here, why Ben had called him. He’d been watching. He was just waiting for Ben to ask, to say the actual words.

 

Ben couldn’t. For once, it wasn’t that he couldn’t find the words — he knew exactly what he wanted to say. He just didn’t want to hear the answer.

 

Eventually, there was no bun left, and Ben had a choice between picking up the spoon or opening his mouth. It was a tougher decision than it should have been, and for a long uncomfortable moment, he just sat there, staring at the bowl and picking at his own nails.

 

“Was it you?” he managed eventually, so quietly he wasn’t sure Poe would hear him.

 

Poe sighed. “No. No, it wasn’t. Sorry.”

 

Taking a deep breath, Ben closed his eyes, jaw tightening. It was about what he’d expected. Isis and Reed had both insisted up and down that no human magician could keep a fairy from answering the call of their true name, regardless of whatever wards or spells they wove. Names were a deeper magic, an older magic, the magic upon which all the rest was built.

 

“I could—” Poe suddenly began, breaking the long silence which had begun to fall. He seemed to rethink speaking at all, looking away out over the room, to were the little glass fox capered about its enclosure, the only part of the room Ben’s rage hadn’t touched. Then he sighed again. “Why the hell am I doing this. Do you have a bowl?”

 

Something about the way he said it made Ben’s stomach tighten to the point of pain, tension ratcheting through his body like a drooping, rusted chain suddenly pulled taut. Swallowing, he reached out and called to the silver basin Phasma had given him to replace the one he’d left in the forest all those years ago. It came flying out from under the wreck of what had once been a desk and into his hand, gonging quietly as he set it down on the metal table top.

 

“Don’t bother,” Poe said as Ben rose to fetch some water, waving his brown hand over the bowl. Crystal clear water appeared as if it had always been there, just beyond the edge of seeing.

 

The bile rose again. _He_ couldn’t do that.

 

“Look,” Poe said with another sigh, sitting forward in his chair, “whatever you see, whatever you think you’re going to do about it… don’t. No good can come of it. This is for closure, and _that’s it_. Understand?”

 

Throat thick, Ben nodded. His heart pattered in his chest, and he found himself struggling to breathe, lungs crushed tight by the sudden weight of anxiety Poe’s warning set upon him. He would not form the thought in words. He _would not_.

 

Poe’s finger sketched an unfamiliar design across the surface of the water, too quick for Ben to catch. The words of the scrying were strange too, some completely foreign to Ben’s ears — he caught ‘ _show me_ ’, and something that sounded like ‘ _taldorei imanestas Hux_ ’, but before he could ask, the water rippled and an image formed, strangely distorted, as if he were looking through a crystalline mist.

 

The first thing that caught Ben’s attention was the blood. Bright metallic crimson ran down Fox’s pale neck and stained his diamond-beaded jerkin, making Ben’s heart stop with thoughts of his throat slit wide, Fox bleeding out somewhere far away while Ben moped, left to rot in some distant wood. It didn’t help that Fox’s face was paper white, his expression strange and drawn and stiff, his blue opal eyes staring into the middle distance and slightly glazed like the eyes of a fresh corpse.

 

Yet Fox was very much alive, moving like a graceful marionette in what Ben recognized as a simplistic yet competent waltz. There was a black-nailed hand on his shoulder, and Poe shifted the image, reveling Nettle, apparently unhurt, but terrified, her black-painted lips forming quick, hushed words and her onyx eyes flitting nervously over at something on her right and above.

 

“What’s she looking at,” Ben asked quietly. Poe looked up at him.

 

“You’ve seen them. They’re not coming back. That’s all you need to know.”

 

“Show me.”

 

“Ben—”

 

Ben’s eyes flashed up, burning with rage, his hands clenching into tight fists. “ _Show me._ ”

 

Pursing his lips into a tight, thin line, Poe let out another sigh. Then he flicked his fingers.

 

For a moment, Ben wasn’t sure what he was looking at. A statue with a chipped face, maybe, or the decomposing corpse of some giant.

 

Then it turned its head and stared at him with empty, gleaming pits, and its thin, scarred lips pulled back into a smile, and he knew.

 

The Devil was real, and the artists had all gotten it wrong.

 

Poe hooked his fingers under the broad rim of the bowl and tipped it, sending a cascade of water over the edge of the table. For a moment, the thing’s face stared out from a dozen droplets and streams. Then it was gone, and all Ben saw in the water was his own reflection.

 

For a long, long while, they sat in absolute silence, but for the quiet drip of lingering water and the distant hush of the sea. Ben barely breathed. Though he’d only looked at it for a second, the image of the thing stuck in his mind like a rusted screw. Somehow, he felt as if it had been waiting for him, as if he had rounded the corner of an alley and found the thing standing there, a long, pale shadow in the moonlight, not stumbled upon but lingering in a place it somehow knew he would be.

 

“That was him, wasn’t it,” Ben said, his voice oddly calm, like a thin layer of ice over a rushing river. “The King.”

 

“Do you get it now?” Poe asked in return, quiet and serious as he had never quite been, as if the thing had shaken him too. “They’re not coming back. Not Hux, not Finn, not Bazine. He has them now, and he’s not going to let them go until he gets what he wants.”

 

Ben paused. Part of him wanted to scream. Break something. Upend the table. Run down the hall and find one of the blasted fairies and tell them _this is what happened. How do we fix it?_

Only he already knew.

 

“What does he want?” he asked, looking at Poe for the first time since the thing had appeared.

 

“Ben—”

 

“ _What does he want?_ ”

 

“Nothing you want to give him,” Poe snapped, gesturing sharply to the water on the floor. “That motherfucker is responsible for the Black Plague. Nothing he wants is _ever_ going to be good.”

 

Again, Ben paused. He looked away, turning thoughts over in his head, wondering. Then, without saying another word, he stood up and stalked off towards the bed.

 

“What are you doing?” Poe asked as Ben lay down. “You can’t be serious.”

 

“Get out of my room,” Ben said.

 

Poe stood up, took a few steps, turned back. “Of all the bad ideas anyone has ever had, this has to be the worst.”

 

“Get out of my room,” Ben repeated as he shuffled around, trying to get comfortable on the rumpled mattress.

 

“You know,” Poe said, storming up to stand by the side of Ben’s bed, “if I were a better man, I’d kill you right now, before you get anybody hurt.”

 

Ben looked at him, at his perfect hair and the slight shadow of stubble along his jaw and his ancient eyes. They reminded him of someone else, but he couldn’t figure who. “You’re welcome to try.”

 

Poe pursed his lips. Ground his teeth. Turned and stalked away.

 

As the door slammed shut, Ben closed his eyes.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“We can’t stay here,” Bazine whispered as they paced across the marble, one-two-three, one-two-three, much easier than Wren had made it look. “We need to get out, we need to find a way. He can’t keep us here forever.”

 

Every day, she said the same thing. Over, and over, and over. As if repeating it would make it true, would make it any more possible. At least it was better than her furtive attempts at revolution; ‘ _we would only need a few hundred’_ and _‘the rest will join us’_ and _‘he’s the strongest of us but we are many’_ , as if that mattered at all.

 

“He has to let us go eventually,” she said, glancing up at the King on his high throne. “He can’t keep us here forever. He’ll get bored. He’ll want bargainers. Like the old days. You’ll see. It’ll all go back to the way it was, once he gets bored.”

 

Hux did not think, _‘and how long will that take?’_ He had thought it the first time, and the second. This time, her words were just noise, buzzing in his ear, a quiet arrhythmic music to accompany the shifting of his feet.

 

Instead, Hux thought about bees.

 

Bees were simple creatures. The Queen, the mother, gave the commands, and the workers followed them. Workers did not think _we are many_. They simply worked. Fulfilled their function. A worker bee who did not collect nectar or make honey or protect the hive was a failure. They had not fulfilled their function, and so they had no place in the hive. They were traitors. They were useless, taking up space, straining resources. The hive was better off without them. And yet the other bees, indifferent, would not drive the traitor away, but bore their weight, too simple to see the flaw in their brethren and so protect themselves from it. Nature was imperfect.

 

Fairies were imperfect too, but in a different way. They were not simple, but they were cruel, and so they let the traitor dance, just to see him suffer.

 

Hux felt Wren come. It was early, but Wren had not kept regular hours of late. Sometimes a day passed between his visits, sometimes a few hours. Hux tried not to think about what that meant.

 

_It means I failed him. It means he needs me. It means I am betraying him with every step I take. And yet I dance. I dance._

“I still think we can do it,” Bazine said, leaning in a little closer, her snake-venom and tar smell drifting into Hux’s world. “If enough of us band together — look at what happened in France. The small don’t need to be afraid of the mighty, the mighty need to be afraid of the small.”

 

_The way a bear fears the stinger_ , Hux thought, but said nothing.

 

Some little while later, a ripple went through the crowd. The dance stopped and Hux stopped with it. Some dull rousing of curiosity tickled in the back of his mind, easily ignored.

 

“Hux!” Bazine hissed, as low as she could, jostling his shoulder. “Hux, look!”

 

Idly, Hux looked.

 

Gira stood before the throne, looking up with her burgundy eyes glittering like the garnets around her throat. Gracefully, she sunk to her knees, effusing, “Oh, my King, it has been so long, if I had known…”

 

Beside her—

 

Beside her was Wren.

 

_He hasn’t shaved,_ Hux thought distantly.

 

Wren didn’t kneel, didn’t shrink before the King, didn’t even seemed shocked, his molasses eyes flicking up to the throne and away, across the crowd. Looking for him, Hux knew. _Step behind Bazine_ , he thought, but too late, meeting Wren’s gaze.

 

Hux had become accustomed to shame, over the last six months. Wren’s eyes stripped all those callouses away, the worry and the hurt cutting him to the bone, the tender joy flaying him alive. Wren was happy to see him. The poor, naive fool was happy to see him.

 

Wren started towards him. Hux took a step back. Wren paused, brows creasing, his head tilting curiously to the side. If Hux had thought screaming at him to go would have done any good, he would have done it in a second.

 

Then the King spoke.

 

“Benjamin Organa,” he said, a full name even Hux hadn’t known. “What a pleasant surprise.”

 

There wasn’t the faintest hint of shock in the King’s deep, rumbling voice. Wren looked up at him, jaw tight, eyes hardening into dark amber points. He looked at the King the way he had looked at the lines of French cannon during the war, determined and composed but still, always, just a little bit afraid. A sparrow staring down a lion.

 

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he called, his voice clear and calm and slightly higher than it should have been. “You’ve been waiting for me.”

 

“I have been waiting for a great many things,” the King replied, his head tipping to the side like a doll with a broken neck. “You are indeed among them.”

 

“I want him back,” Wren said. “Both of them. All of them.”

 

The King hummed, a deep crunching sound like gravel grinding under heavy wheels. His nails clicked against the smooth arm of his throne in a rolling tap, one at a time.

 

“Hux,” the King said. “Come.”

 

Hux expected to be forced onto his knees, but the words were clean, even his name, simple sounds without any more magic attached than what lived in them to begin with. It felt like a gift, being able to stride across the floor and up those stairs, like a man instead of a dog. He kept his eyes down, kept his face turned away, the picture of obedience as his back prickled with the electricity of Wren’s concerned gaze. When he reached the top of the pyramid, he knelt of his own accord, but the King gestured for him to stand, reaching out with one claw-fingered hand to touch his shoulder, turn him, hold him in place like a child before a frightening stranger.

 

“Tell him,” the King purred, his nails pricking sharp through Hux’s clothes.

 

The words came easy, worn smooth by the litany that had echoed in his mind since the day he returned.

 

“I broke my contract. I failed my King. I deserve to be punished.”

 

Hux refused to look up. Refused to meet Wren’s gaze. Refused to see the snickers and the smirks, or worse, the pity, the disgust, the derision.

 

Some part of him — the part of him that had given Wren the finger in the first place — wanted Wren to turn away. To forsake him. To say ‘ _yes, you do_ ’ and leave him to his misery. Wanted Wren to hate him, so it could be over, so he could pack all this away and get on with living, like cutting off a gangrenous limb so the stump could heal. The sooner Wren gave up on him, the sooner the wound would close.

 

“I want him back,” Wren said again, softly, and the thing in his voice was as far from hate as it could be.

 

The King hummed again, the pressure of the nails against Hux’s skin increasing just enough to sting, like knife-points pressed into his flesh.

 

“I am not without mercy,” the King said, slowly, measured, “but such a _gift_ must be earned.”

 

For a moment, there was silence. _Go_ , Hux thought. _Go home. Leave me be. Go find the bloody girl if you like, just go, as far as you can, as far from me and as far from this and as far from_ him _as you can._

“Whatever it takes,” Wren said.

 

Hux’s heart fell.

 

“Very well,” the King replied, kindly again, his hand raising from Hux’s shoulder to extend towards Wren. “You shall be my instrument. Loyal. Unquestioning. In return, I will give you everything you have ever wanted.”

 

Wren hesitated. Then, two at a time, he took the steps, standing in front of Hux and looking from him to the hand hovering between them. At last, Hux allowed himself a flash of a glance, the briefest glimpse, of hair grown ragged and tangled, a full black beard, plush down-turned lips and arched, furrowed brows and burnt-sugar eyes swimming with worry and fear and doubt.

 

_Fly away,_ Hux thought, as he had that first morning, watching Wren confront his uncle. _Fly away, little bird. He has no hold on you. Not yet._

Wren did not fly. He never did, when he should, and flew when he should have stayed his ground, it was infuriating and Hux loved him so much and Wren was reaching up, reaching out, and Hux could have, should have, slapped his hand out of the air and screamed at him, _‘RUN’_ , but he didn’t, and Wren’s hand closed around two of the King’s fingers in as close to a handshake as they could manage.

 

“The bargain is struck,” Wren said, a tremor in his voice.

 

The King smiled. “The bargain is struck.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Ben woke up shivering, the memory of the King’s cold, electric touch still sparking in his veins. It felt like poison. Staring up at the basalt ceiling, Ben wondered what he had done.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Bazine was talking to him. Hux didn’t hear her at all. His feet moved to the three-beat rhythm of their own accord, his mind otherwise occupied with a million swirling thoughts.

 

The King looked at one bargainer in a hundred, conversed with one in a thousand, personally dealt with so few even Hux couldn’t calculate the odds. Wren was special, that Hux had always known, from the moment he heard the call, but the King’s interest sharpened that knowledge into a deadly point.

 

There was something there. Some shape, shrouded in darkness, large enough that Hux could only feel a small part, the ragged edge, the tail of the elephant in the blind man’s fable. Slowly, Hux worked it over, felt the grooves and the dips and the bumps, following a line of reasoning that could have been true, or could have been but a shimmer in the distance, tricking him into false hope.

 

Suppose, for a moment, that the King really had been waiting for Wren. Suppose, for a moment, that Wren’s loyalty was a thing important enough for the King to bargain for. How to make him agree, then? What would be the simplest path?

 

Wren was not naturally ambitious. He wanted no crowns or titles, wealth or fame. He wanted to be powerful, strong, but he wanted to earn it, to do it himself, and Hux doubted the King could teach Wren better or faster than he could. Besides, offering a man something he already possessed was no way to make a deal.

 

No. When a man wanted nothing, the best way to bargain with him was to take away something he already had. Something he couldn’t live without.

 

Something he loved.

 

Hux had broken his contract. He had done as no fairy had ever done, as no fairy had dared to do, and the King had every right to punish him.

 

_But_ , niggled a little part of his brain.

 

_But._

Nothing had happened. It hadn’t hurt. The sky hadn’t opened. The world hadn’t ended. The King hadn’t returned, not for almost six years. And perhaps that was significant and perhaps it was not, but the King didn’t ask for the loyalty of mortals, and he didn’t promise the world.

 

_If_ , Hux thought, _if_ the King wanted Wren, for this or for that or just to have… if that was his goal, then punishing Hux… Keeping Hux…

 

That would be a good way to do it.

 

Hux thought, and thought, and thought, and little by little, the blood on his clothes faded away.


	5. March 15th; England

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY THIS IS UPLOADED LATE
> 
> I JUST WATCHED DOCTOR STRANGE FOR THE FIRST TIME AND I AM HAVING A MENTAL BREAKDOWN OF EXCITEMENT FOR THOR RAGNAROK
> 
> ON TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING

 

**March 15th, England**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Every surface within the palace gleamed. Ben wondered idly whose decision that had been, and whether they would regret it in the morning.

 

He left the others systematically emptying the ample pantry into their bags and took off down the moonlit corridor, magic muffling the sound of his boots against the polished stone. At this hour, most of the castle was snuggly in bed, servants and residents both, but he had no desire to take chances. This was risky enough as it was.

 

Making his way up a switchback servant’s stair, he found himself in a large room with high golden ceilings and tall ornately molded windows taking up the whole expanse of the outer wall, gold leaf plastered to the ridges of the paneled walls and a thick red carpet spread over the parquet floor. Ben had never been in a room so… gaudy. He supposed he should have been impressed, and perhaps would have been, if he’d seen it in the golden light of day. At night it just looked like the architectural equivalent of costume jewelry.

 

_His_ palace would never be like this, he swore to himself as he padded through room after ostentatious room. There were better things to spend money on. How many meals could the paintings of dead noblemen and fruit hanging on the walls have purchased? How many people slept in the streets to pay for those solid gold candlesticks? Everywhere he looked, he saw some new facet of corruption, cataloging them like crimes.

 

It was the only way he was going to make it through the night.

 

Eventually he came to the hall he’d been looking for. It was empty, but for a pair of red-uniformed guards standing outside a door, yawning and slouching. He’d expected them, but still he cursed. He’d hoped to leave others out of this.

 

Hiding in the doorway, he carefully held his hand out, staring at the man on the right. Concentrating, Ben could feel him, a little glimmer in the candlelit dark.

 

_Sleep,_ Ben thought.

 

Yawning again, the guard leaned back against the wall, then slid down, head lolling on his shoulders as he slumped. The other guard blinked at him, bushy brows almost touching.

 

“Oi, Michael,” he said, kicking the first guard lightly, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

 

_Sleep_ , Ben thought again, and the second guard wavered, sunk, ended up face down with his head in Michael’s lap, already beginning to snore. Ben almost smiled. That was going to take some explaining.

 

Stepping over them, Ben eased his way through the door, carefully closing it behind him without a sound. The bedroom was as lush as the rest of the palace, done up in a fanciful Gothic style, with dark wooden panels on the walls and a thick patterned carpet laid out over a floor stained almost to blackness. The bed was draped in heavy red curtains, drawn though the nearly identical curtains over the windows were drawn as well. Ben called a gentle light to hover in the palm of his hand and approached the bed.

 

The man sleeping in it barely stirred when Ben pulled the curtain back. He was old, bordering on pudgy, with long white hair and a long wispy beard that put Gaius’ to shame.

 

He didn’t look like a king. He looked like somebody’s grandfather.

 

He _was_ somebody’s grandfather.

 

Ben tried not to think about that.

 

As Ben carefully pulled down the blankets, the old man’s white eyes blinked open.

 

“Wha?” he said in a hoarse voice. “Morning already?”

 

“No, your majesty,” Ben said softly, sliding his hand under the king’s spindly legs. The king’s arms wrapped around his throat without hesitation.

 

“Going somewhere?” the king asked, leaning his head against Ben’s shoulder as he lifted him from the bed. “Going for a walk?”

 

“Yes, your majesty,” Ben replied, and said no more.

 

As he carried the king back the way he had come, the old man talked. Nonsense, mostly; he didn’t like pumpkins, they were too cold for autumn, and he wanted a cat but they wouldn’t let him have one because the ravens would peck out its eyes, and he didn’t like his son, his son just wanted him to die, the whole country just wanted him to die.

 

“We’re the king, you know,” he mumbled into Ben’s shoulder. “King of England and Ireland and the world, and they’re all very jealous of us, because we get to eat pudding whenever we want.”

 

Ben adjusted the old man in his arms. He was heavy and frail at once, close to dead weight, and Ben found himself wishing they’d picked a place closer to the king’s rooms. He wanted this over with, before he lost his nerve.

 

“You’ve seen him, haven’t you,” the old man whispered, as if it were a secret. “The _other_ King. The King of the stars.” When Ben didn’t reply, he continued, giggling quietly into Ben’s collar. “He talks to us, the King of the stars. He shows us things. Wonderful things. Horrible things. He put a rose at our mouth so we couldn’t tell anyone, but you’ve seen him. Tell him to come back, will you? We miss our conversations.”

 

Ben swallowed hard.

 

Mitaka was guarding the door to the kitchens when Ben arrived. Seeing the old man in Ben’s arms, Mitaka’s rounded black brows pinched.

 

“You’re going through with it, then,” he said, voice not as carefully neutral as he probably intended. “You know what this will do.”

 

_But you don’t_ , Ben thought. Out loud, he said, “I don’t have a choice.”

 

The king giggled again. “We’re going on an adventure.”

 

“Yes, your majesty,” Mitaka said as he held open the door, shooting Ben a sidelong look. “We’re going on an adventure.”

 

“Back already?” Phasma asked as they entered, cinching shut a canvas bag and slinging it over her broad shoulder. “It’s only been eleven years.”

 

“That’s him?” Isis asked with a scoff, throwing an orange into Ozymandias’ overflowing sack. “ _That’s_ the King of England? A mad old man?”

 

“That’s a hereditary monarchy for you,” Ozymandias grumbled, smacking Isis’ hand away as she tossed in another orange. “Forget merit, let’s put the most inbred in charge.”

 

“Watch your tongue,” Gaius snapped as Silver shut his bag for him. “Forgive him, your highness, he’s an imbecile, utterly irredeemable, can’t put his boots on without help—”

 

Ozymandias protested and the two men began to bicker, Isis and Silver eyeing each other suspiciously as each slunk protectively to their respective bargainer’s side. Ben carried the king over to the large metal pot through which they had entered. The old man had begun humming, some sort of lullaby or a hymn Ben didn’t recognize.

 

Reed came up to stand beside them, the emeralds sewn into his jerkin glittering like summer leaves in the candlelight, his arms clasped tight behind his back.

 

“Are you ready?” the fairy asked brusquely.

 

“No,” Ben replied. “Let’s go.”

 

Without another word, Reed took his arm.

 

“Oh,” the king gasped as they slipped into the Kingsroads, his blind eyes widening as he looked around at all the crisscrossing paths and the multitude of shining mirrors floating in the vaguely blue air. “ _Oh_ , sir, you have taken us, you have taken us to a most wonderful, place, let us stand, let us—”

 

Gently, Ben set the old man down, holding him steady as his legs wobbled under his weight. The king was grinning, mouth wide in childlike wonder as he spun, craning his neck to follow arching stairways and swirling ramps.

 

“Beautiful,” he breathed, holding tight to Ben’s arm.

 

“He can see?” Ben asked quietly, keeping pace as the king began to toddle off.

 

“I suppose he would,” Reed replied, a slight bitterness to his tone. “If the rumors are true and the Roads connect to the Faerie realm as well, then it would make some manner of sense. In Faerie, no-one is blind.”

 

“Faerie,” the king repeated. “Is that where we’re going? To Faerie?”

 

“No,” Ben said.

 

The shortest reasonable path brought them out through the window of an apothecary and onto a broad, well-kept street. The smell of the city filled the air like smog, a dingy brownish smell both unpleasant and comforting. The king sniffed and made a low hum.

 

“London! Shall we see the queen?”

 

“If you like,” Ben replied. The queen had been dead for five months. “Reed, meet me at the Abbey.”

 

Reed looked at him, his jade eyes narrowing, but he said nothing, vanishing into the night.

 

Ben let the king walk as slowly as he liked. The street was scattered with shallow puddles, and the king splashed in every one his bare toes touched, delighted, babbling on about monsters under the sea and little pale children who lived in raindrops and made them cold. After ten minutes and no more than a hundred yards, the king’s age and infirmity and the cool spring night caught up with him, and he began to lean on Ben more and more, until eventually Ben just picked him up again. He fell blessedly silent for a time, breathing deeply, almost as if he’d gone back to sleep.

 

Eventually they came to the looming Gothic towers of Westminster Abbey. Reed waited for them by the arched entryway, leaning against the wall with his thin pale arms crossed over his chest. Ben found himself walking slower. He wished he could justify arcing his path past the blooming tree, so the king could hear the whisper of the leaves. Wished he could set the old man down in the grass and let him lie in the dew. Wished he could turn around and go anywhere but here.

 

“Hold onto me, your majesty,” Ben murmured as he neared the church. “I don’t want to drop you.”

 

The king hummed into Ben’s collar.

 

Ben had never been good at air magic. Manipulating the air required a kind of enthusiasm that went against his nature, especially at a time like this. Without Fox guiding him towards the ‘correct’ solution, however, he’d begun to find work-arounds, loopholes and tricks that worked without him entirely knowing why. A few muttered words, and a handful of cobblestones tore loose from their places and began to levitate, low at first and then higher as they went. For a moment, he thought they wouldn’t bear his weight — the first stone sunk under his foot — but while the second dipped, it didn’t fall. It was almost like stepping on a mattress or loamy earth, a give that held firm when pressed hard enough.

 

Walking up the staircase of stones was a precarious venture, and it was impossible to do it gracefully. He felt like he was wading through a marsh uphill, his arms aching and his legs protesting each over-extended step. By the time he managed to wobble his way to the thick ledge just beneath the steep central roof, he was breathing hard, sweat prickling on his brow.

 

He set the king down very, very carefully, keeping one hand on the old man’s chest to prevent him from tumbling over the edge as he knelt. From his pocket, he withdrew a short length of black rope, barely long enough to lay flat across his palm. At a word, it grew, threads extending and twining around one another to form four feet, six feet, twelve. A little magical maneuvering, and he had one end tied around the cross at the peak of the roof.

 

The other end, he tied with his hands. He owed the old man that much.

 

The king had been silent for a long while, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge and looking out over the city as if he could see it, the way he’d seen the Kingsroads. His bare feet were still damp and muddy, and he shivered slightly, his nightclothes doing little against the chill. Ben suddenly wished he had paused to help the old man dress.

 

“We are very tired,” the king said suddenly, sounding as weary as he claimed. “The other King won’t let me sleep. He wants us to talk, talk, talk, all the time, because it’s so very quiet in the stars, you see. So quiet you can hear all the little bees in their little dresses buzz buzz buzzing away. We would very much like it to be quiet for a while.”

 

Ben let him have his quiet.

 

The others would be finished by now, the food they’d taken from Windsor Castle’s larders having mysteriously appeared on needy tables all across England. They would be returning to the compound, waiting for him. Wondering where he was. What he was doing. What he was waiting for.

 

_A miracle_ , Ben thought, playing with the rope. _I’m waiting for an angel to come down, like Abraham and Isaac._

There was no angel. There was only the dawn, beginning to creep over the edge of the horizon.

 

“I’m ready now,” the king said, his voice so soft Ben almost didn’t catch it. His heart jumped into his throat.

 

“I’m sorry, your majesty,” he said thickly, holding the rope so tight it pressed the pattern into his palms.

 

“Don’t be sorry,” the king — George — said with a little chuckle. “I’m eighty years old. And I should like to see my children again. Amelia and Octavius and Alfred. I see them, oh, I see them every day, but I should like to do it with my own eyes. I should like to hold them again. I should like to hold their little hands in mine and—”

 

He choked off, tears streaming down from his white eyes into his beard. He reached out with a shaking hand and Ben took it, wondering what it was like to be old, to be blind, to hold your dead children in your arms. George squeezed his hand tightly, his fingers cold as if he were already gone.

 

“Tell the star-eyed King,” George insisted. “Tell him I was myself in the end. Tell him he lost.”

 

“I will,” Ben gulped, and looped the noose around the old man’s neck.

 

When it was done, Ben didn’t look. He dropped down from the ledge, slowing his fall just enough to avoid breaking his legs. Reed stared at him, but said nothing. Ben was glad of that, and ashamed by how much.

 

His hand shook as he knelt on the paving stones. He had practiced carving these words a dozen times before they left, so they would be perfect. This time, they came out rough. He couldn’t be bothered fixing them. He wanted to be home. He wanted to be asleep. He wanted to hold Fox in his arms, look into his eyes, remember why he was doing this. Remember why this was worth it.

 

When they were done, he stood and turned his back, stalking away down the street from whence he had come. The windows of Westminster were closer, but Ben didn’t want to go back. Couldn’t go back. Couldn’t look at the body, or the words etched into the stone below it, or he would start thinking about what they meant.

 

_No more kings._


	6. March 16th

**March 16th**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

Wren was sad tonight, his head bowed and his feet shuffling through the steps as if dragged on chains. It took Hux a few minutes to remember why. His mind had been occupied with other things.

 

He’d hoped to have something by now. Some plot or scheme that did not involve playing along and hoping the King did not kill Wren or break him along the way. Yet that was the only path Hux could see. Any attempt at revolution would end at a single command, and attempting to take the King by surprise before he could react was impossible without coordination. If they had the King’s true name, much could be done, and more, but there was no creature mortal or fairy who knew it. If anyone ever had, that knowledge had been lost to the vast gulf of history. Hux would have to think of something else, though what he couldn’t imagine.

 

He longed to wrap his arms around Wren, press kisses to his throat, whisper to him that all would be well, that he was still here, that he would protect him as he had promised. To talk this over and see what ingenuities a human mind could discover. But if they were to have a chance, the King could not know. Had to believe Hux was still broken, still devastated, still repeating _failure_ over and over in his head.

 

So he kept his distance. He kept his silence. He stared into space and pretended the touch of Wren’s hand upon his didn’t spark flutters in his belly. He waited, and he planned.

 

He wasn’t going to fail again.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Poddleton was the worst.

 

Ben hadn’t told the others exactly what he’d intended to do; only Mitaka and Reed, out of pure necessity. He’d asked them to keep quiet, and they had, until dawn was well on the way and Mitaka found himself alone with an increasingly worried cadre of extremely persistent magicians. By the time Ben and Reed stepped through the mirror hung in the officer’s common room, Mitaka had told them everything.

 

Gaius was furious, almost beyond words. He sputtered for a while, telling Ben nothing he didn’t already know — that George was a helpless old man, that he didn’t deserve to be _hung from a church_ , that killing soldiers in battle was one thing and murder another entirely — and then stormed off to shut himself in his room, slamming the obsidian door so hard it chipped. Ozymandias thought it was funny, Isis ‘unsporting’. Phasma said nothing, but looked at him as if she were no longer quite sure who he was. Mitaka couldn’t look at him at all.

 

Poddleton stood in the back, quiet, tears streaming down his face. Then, unnoticed by everyone but Ben, he slipped away down the hall.

 

An hour later, as Ben struggled to work up the courage to fall asleep, his door had opened and Poddleton came in unannounced, with a plate of sweet wholemeal soda bread and apple slices in one hand and a glass of milk with honey in the other. Setting the food down on the driftwood table, he stared at Ben expectantly, his brown eyes still teary and red.

 

“Well?” he sniffed, crossing his slender arms over his chest. “Go on, then. I’m not leaving till you’re taken care of.”

 

He hadn’t. He’d stood there until Ben got up, sat in one of the metal chairs, started picking at the food. Then he’d bustled around the room, picking up clothes and sweeping up the mess with a touch of magic Ben hadn’t known he’d had. He even put the sheets back together and made the bed, though he could do nothing about the pillows. When Ben was done with the food, he’d taken the plate and the glass and left without saying another word.

 

Now, the rest of the day had passed, and the night, whiled away in the Faerie Court because a shadow of Fox was better than none. Ben opened his eyes to discover a covered tray on the table, and under it sausages and eggs and toast, more apple slices, another glass of milk. Someone — even given before, Ben couldn’t imagine Poddleton possessing the skill — had enchanted the dishes to keep the food warm and the milk cold. Ben imagined Poddleton following the other Knights around, badgering them until one of them agreed to help, and huffed a laugh.

 

He wasn’t hungry, but he ate anyway. Part way through the third sausage, his throat closed. Head in his hands, he sat, staring at the food he didn’t deserve and refusing to let himself cry.

 

A long while later, he heard the door gently creak. Sitting up, he scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to come up with an excuse for the half-eaten breakfast before Poddleton asked, or worse, made him finish it.

 

Only the man at his door wasn’t Poddleton.

 

There was anger in Poe’s expression, knotted up between his eyebrows and in the corners of his mouth, but mostly he looked disappointed, a weight to his old eyes and the slump of his shoulders. He entered the room reluctantly, closing the door behind him with exaggerated care. Ben appreciated that. He didn’t want the others getting caught up in what was about to happen.

 

“Should have come an hour ago,” Ben said, surprised to find his voice clear and calm. “I would have been asleep.”

 

“See, that’s the difference between you and me,” Poe replied, coming closer one cautious step at a time. “I would never kill a defenseless man.”

 

Ben didn’t have a response for that. Part of him wanted to argue — to come up with some mythical scenario where the killing of one defenseless man could save many, to justify his actions. To say he was ‘just following orders’, that he hadn’t had a choice, that he’d been compelled. He wanted to reframe it as a mercy, to claim it had taken strength, to do the terrible, necessary thing. The words rang false before he even said them.

 

“I would,” he said instead. “I would burn the world, if that’s what it took.”

 

“Well, you’re off to a great start,” Poe snipped, close enough now to loom. “There are riots in London. Parliament is trying to rush through a bill banning practical magic. What you did is going to make life hard for a lot of people.”

 

Slowly, Ben stood, reversing the height difference. “You came to kill me, didn’t you? Why are we still talking?”

 

Pausing, Poe looked at him. Procrastinating. Ben knew the feeling.

 

“You know, I wish I’d known you before,” Poe said, his voice as heavy as his eyes. “Might have gone a different way.”

 

Ben just nodded.

 

In a flash, Poe’s hand came up. A wave of wind hit Ben square in the chest and flung him backwards, his back cracking against a shattered bookshelf. It was like falling three stories and hitting solid stone. He slumped, fighting to suck air back into his emptied lungs, and Poe hit him again, stood over him, drove him down into the floor. Wind pounded against his chest like hammers, like a boulder, crushing him slowly but surely under an immense, terrifying pressure. He squirmed, struggled, finally managed to slap his palm against the basalt floor. Stone welled up around Poe’s feet, reached his knees, crumbled. Ben couldn’t focus, not with sparks dancing in his vision.

 

Eyes rolling to the side, he saw the little glass fox, clawing at the crystal wall of its enclosure, tiny mouth yipping frantically. Trying to protect him.

 

He closed his eyes.

 

Poe didn’t glimmer so much as _shine_ , a sun in human form, magic swirling around him in glittering arcs. Ben had never tried this on another magician, not one with training, and he didn’t want to do it now — reaching into that would be like thrusting his arm into a furnace. Still, he reached, and—

 

“ _No,”_ Poe snapped, the wind crushing harder against him. He felt something in his chest crack. “Sorry, Ben, but it’s not going to be that easy.”

 

It never was.

 

Ben didn’t reach out, he _jumped_ , thrust his mind into that glow until it surrounded him, consumed him. It was like plunging into an ocean of cold heat, pain throbbing through his head as if a chisel had been driven into his skull. Poe grunted, and Ben knew he felt it too. There was a wrongness to this, a deep abiding wrongness that made him sick and made his heart pound, the way it had in the woods when he woke the trees.

 

Poe tried to force him out, pushing back with his mind and magic both. Ben felt another crack. It focused him, as pain always did, and he became the chisel, drove deeper and deeper into Poe’s light until he felt like everything he was would boil away. He couldn’t survive here. But he didn’t have to. He just had to get _in_.

 

“ _No_ ,” Poe grit again. “You’re not—”

 

Ben broke through.

 

Instantly, the wind stopped. Ben gasped, grit his teeth at the agony of his grinding ribs, kept breathing. The black spots and the dizziness slowly began to fade.

 

Poe dropped to his knees. Ben jerked, for a moment afraid, until he saw the distant expression on the man’s face, his strange eyes glazed and staring at nothing. Ben could still feel him, squirming like an unwanted thought in the back of his mind, a little thread of anger burning like a coal amongst ashes. Small. Cold. Impotent.

 

A familiar feeling began to dawn in Ben’s chest, the same un-horrified exhilaration he had felt after the woods. He’d _done_ it. He was alive, and he was _powerful_ , he could bring a master magician to his _knees_ and Ben distrusted that feeling, distrusted those thoughts. He remembered Badajoz, remembered after, remembered the way Rey had looked at him when she found out.

 

Still. He couldn’t help but smile.

 

Carefully, wincing, Ben sat up. He’d never gone this far before, never dominated another mind so completely. He’d only ever planted suggestions — _sleep_ , or _obey_ , or _be good._ He didn’t know what to do with this much control. They’d talked about doing this, Fox and him, to reform criminals, degenerates, strip them down and take away all the ugliness and make them useful again. Fox had suggested a few times that he use it on his own men, to ensure their absolute loyalty. Ben had put it off, unwilling to go to such extremes on men who’d joined him more or less of their own free will, but Poe had tried to kill him. Surely this was justified. Surely.

 

“Poe,” he said, his voice rough and tight with pain, “you’re going to stop trying to kill me. Understand?”

 

Poe looked at him, but gave no indication one way or another, his eyes still distant. Ben repeated the command to the same effect, and then, wondering, tried it in the Old Tongue.

 

Poe nodded.

 

Fighting another smile, Ben cleared his throat. “ _You are going to help me. You are going to do whatever I say._ ”

 

Again, nods.

 

The little coal of resistance flared. Pain throbbed between Ben’s eyes and he winced again. Poe was fighting, fighting hard, furious and stubborn. Ben wasn’t sure how much longer he could maintain this, or whether the commands would stick. He repeated them, twice, until the splitting headache became too much and he groaned, pressing the heels of his hands to his temples as if his head were cracking in two.

 

Like an explosion going off, Ben’s control shattered. Poe’s hand flew up, magic gathering in his palm, and Ben shrunk back, sucking in a deep breath in anticipation of the column of air smashing into his chest. His ribs screamed.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Poe’s hand shook. His face contorted, fury and frustration creasing his brow and pulling his lips away from his teeth. Then his arm slashed out to the side, a wall of wind smashing into the bed and sending the mattress flying, the bed frame screeching across the floor. Sheets billowed like angry ghosts and Poe roared through gritted teeth.

 

“I hate you!” he spat. “I try not to hate people, but for you I’ll _gladly_ make an exception.”

 

Ben’s heart pattered in his chest. He let out a shaky breath.

 

“I’ll find a way around it,” Poe promised, venom in his voice. “I’ll find a way out. You haven’t beaten me. You’ve just bought yourself some time.”

 

Ben slumped back against the wall. He hadn’t felt this exhausted in a long, long time.

 

“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I think you broke my ribs.”

 

“Good,” Poe bit. “I hope they hurt.”

 

They did.

 

When Ben limped down the hallway into the common room with Poe dragging his heels behind him like a beaten dog, Ozymandias’ jaw dropped open. Ben didn’t have the energy or the patience to explain. Poe didn’t even try, just glared daggers into Ben’s back as Ozymandias wrapped bandages around his aching ribs with more skill than Ben would have given him credit for. And when Ben stuck Poe in one of the unoccupied officer’s quarters and sealed the door shut, Poe didn’t complain.

 

Ben went back to his room. Looked at his destroyed bed. Looked at the breakfast waiting for him on the table, still warm. Sat down.

 

He still didn’t feel like he deserved the food. Deserved it less, even. But what he’d said before held true.

 

He would burn the world if that was what it took to get Fox back. Compared to that, eggs were easy.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

This time, Wren was not quiet. He drew Hux against him until he could whisper into Hux’s ear, his lips just barely brushing the shell and testing Hux’s resolve like never before.

 

“I’m going to fight for you,” Wren promised. “I’m going to fight for you, and I’m going to win. Whatever it takes. So you can stop it with the cold shoulder routine. I don’t care what you think you deserve.”

 

For a moment, Hux wasn’t sure what he meant. Surely Wren knew, surely he could feel the pattering of Hux’s heart whenever they touched, he couldn’t possibly _think_ …

 

He turned his head, as much as he dared, and hissed a whisper into Wren’s ear. “You’re an idiot. Shut up and let me plan.”

 

Wren grinned.

 


	7. April

**April**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The second riot started the day of King George’s funeral, when a rotten egg splattered across the face of the former crown prince. The man who threw it wore a raven feather in his lapel.

 

A few days later, a little girl wore one behind her ear, running down the streets shouting ‘No more kings!” as police chased her down with batons in hand. That sparked riot number three.

 

Soon the feathers were everywhere, in shirt pockets and lady’s hats and next to candles in windowsills so the ‘fairies’ would know where to bring the bounty they pilfered from the larders of the rich. The harder the government tried to crack down, the more there were.

 

The bill banning practical magic passed and the yellow tents of the street magicians vanished overnight, their occupants hiding or behind bars. There were rumors of executions, secret gallows in the Tower of London, tongues torn out and burnt. Ben thought they might have overdone it on that one, but then a body was found floating in the Thames without eyes, tongue, or hands, and the whole city believed it, more and more ardently the more the government denied it.

 

Efforts were made to pull down the statue in Whitechapel. They did not succeed. Guards had to be stationed around it to prevent petitioners from whispering wishes to it, touching it for luck, for wealth, for protection. And in other places, the petitioners were not stopped; in Paris, former revolutionaries left votive candles around the base and whispered _liberté_ as they passed, and in Brussels they strung the raven in garlands and wreaths. The Americans did manage to topple the one in New York, shooting cannons at the base until the obsidian cracked and chipped, but they couldn’t move it afterward, and the children of New York’s poor came to play on it, squabbling over who got to be the ‘raven king’ and who had to play his fairy servants.

 

Ben went to watch, sometimes, careful not to shave and keep his hair tied up and wear a white shirt instead of black. He’d played games like that, by himself, pretending to be his grandfather. It gave him a strange sense of delight, knowing there were children in the world who wanted to be him. That felt like an accomplishment, and he needed those.

 

The city wasn’t coming along the way he’d hoped. None of them knew what they were doing, artistically or architecturally. Reed, Isis and Silver could, with difficulty, raise a building that wouldn’t fall down, but none of them had the dramatic grace of Fox’s works, sitting like squat black bricks scattered about an otherwise idyllic landscape. Still, their citizens were glad to have roofs over their heads and room to stretch their legs, and if there had been any murmurs of dissent, they were for the moment quiet. They’d all heard what Ben had done to Poe.

 

The man was, in Ben’s opinion, a Godsend, though the others — Phasma and Ozymandias particularly — did not agree. Ozymandias, a staunch abolitionist, disagreed with what he termed Poe’s ‘enslavement’ on philosophical grounds, while Phasma simply didn’t trust the man. For his part, Ben found the constant stream of insults and threats oddly soothing. They served as a reminder, of what he was and what he was not. Kept him from getting distracted. _And_ Poe could navigate the Kingsroads sans a fairy, though he claimed to be unable to adequately explain how, which meant Ben could keep the others out of his errands for the King entirely.

 

So it was that Ben, arm in arm with Poe, stepped through an ornate golden sconce gleaming with candlelight and into a long white hallway, every door and decorative pillar mounted with complex molding. At least the ceiling wasn’t gold.

 

It wasn’t where he’d expected — or rather, hoped — to come out, and he shot Poe a look.

 

“I thought we agreed this wouldn’t happen anymore.”

 

“You told me to take you to the Winter Palace.” Poe shrugged, his strange eyes glittering in the candlelight. “This is the Winter Palace.”

 

“The wrong side of it,” Ben retorted, adjusting the leather satchel slung over his arm and pointing an accusatory finger. “If this goes wrong, I’m blaming you.”

 

“I’m blaming myself either way,” Poe quipped as they set off down the hallway. “Should have killed you the first time I saw you.”

 

“Yes, you should have,” Ben agreed. “Why didn’t you? I’ve been meaning to ask.”

 

Shrugging again, Poe slid his hands into his pockets. “Someone argued your case. Said you were a good kid caught up with a bad person. Asked me to give you a chance.”

 

Ben slowed. “Rey?”

 

“Nope,” Poe said with a smirk. “She still thinks you’re an irredeemable bastardly son of a bitch.”

 

“Well,” Ben sighed. “It’s nice to know I’m loved.”

 

A moment of silence passed before Poe spoke again, his head tilted up as if admiring the molded plaster ceiling.

 

“And, you know, there’s the other thing. It takes a special kind of someone to make a fairy fall in love with them, especially one like Fox. I was curious. Figured you must be devastatingly handsome. Then I saw _that_ thing and knew it had to be your stellar personality.”

 

Poe gestured his nose and Ben scoffed, turning his face away to hide the wan smile tugging at his lips.

 

A few rooms later, they came upon a sprawling library, dark shelves filled with beautiful leather-bound books Ben would have killed for. Tsar Alexander had a fascination with magic, and Ben recognized a few titles in Latin and Greek, books he’d had his eye on or just dreamed about. He felt a sudden pang, thinking of the torn pages scattered across his bedroom floor.

 

“Jesus,” Poe cursed, looking around with bright eyes. “Did you finally kill me? Because I think this is heaven.”

 

“You like books?” Ben asked, reaching out to run his fingertips over a row of spines.

 

“Of course I like books.” Poe walked over to a shelf, slid a book out, flipped it open to a random page. “Everybody likes books.”

 

“Not everyone,” Ben mumbled, thinking about the jealous gleam in Fox’s eye whenever he caught Ben reading. He plucked a book from the shelf as well, a thin blue grimoire focusing on minor alteration spells — making statues move, cutlery dance, clothes change color, that sort of thing. Ben smiled. He felt like a professor flipping through a child’s coloring book, though he knew this was as much magic as most ever managed to use. “How did you learn? Just reading, or did you have a master?”

 

“My mother taught me,” Poe replied, putting the book back and picking out another one. “We didn’t have a lot of reading material where I grew up. I didn’t see an actual book until I was thirty. Thought they were the greatest invention in history. Words put down in little pictures? Sign me up.”

 

“Thirty?” Ben repeated with a huff. “You’re not _that_ much older than me. Do you even know how to read?”

 

“I know how to read,” Poe replied with a touch of annoyance in his voice. “You might be surprised. I’m older than I look.”

 

Ben glanced up at him. “Are you old enough to be my father, because that would be incredibly disturbing.”

 

As Poe turned to answer, a door creaked. Ben whirled just in time to see a pale face poke into the room.

 

_“Zdravstvuyte_?” the young maid called, her big blue eyes flying as large as the saucers on the silver tray she carried as she spotted them. “ _Kto ty?_ ”

 

For a moment, the three of them stood staring at each other, a grin slowly breaking across Poe’s face. He waved.

 

The girl dropped the tray and turned to run.

 

Ben threw out his hand, splitting his focus, one half of his mind seizing the woman’s glimmer and thinking _sleep_ while the other wrapped magic around the falling tea set to hold it in the air. She wobbled on her feet, took a step, then slumped forward and fell. Tea gurgled out of the pot, pooling over the mosaic floor and soaking into the girl’s white canvas shoes.

 

Taking a breath, Ben looked over at Poe.

 

“Well, that was close,” Poe said, putting his book back on the shelf. “What, do you want applause? Because I can give you applause. I am equipped with the means to applaud.”

 

“An apology would be nice,” Ben groused, setting his own book down and padding over to the girl, carefully stepping around the spreading puddle of tea.

 

“You first,” Poe half-joked, his tone growing more serious as he asked, “Is she alright?”

 

She had a growing goose egg on her forehead, but her soft, pale skin wasn’t broken. Ben turned her head so the swelling wasn’t pressed against the floor and stood.

 

“No thanks to you.”

 

Poe grit his teeth, storming along in Ben’s footsteps as he stepped over the woman and started down the long dark-paneled hallway beyond the door. “Tell me you wouldn’t do the same if you were in my shoes.”

 

“I am in your shoes,” Ben grumbled, reaching into the satchel and pulling out a large, heavy envelope. “I have to do what the King says, and here I am, doing what the King says.”

 

“It’s not the same and you know it,” Poe snapped. “You had a choice. I didn’t.”

 

“I had a choice?” Ben barked a bitter laugh. “Really? Because last time I checked, _he had Fox_. What am I supposed to do, leave him there to suffer?”

 

“Sure,” Poe said as Ben reached the fifth of the tall, narrow doors that broke the line of the hallway and bent to slide the envelope underneath. “Why not? Leave him there, stop trying to take over the world, go home and live a normal life. It was a very valid option. But no, you decided to stick with fairy Genghis Khan. Did it ever occur to you that maybe he doesn’t deserve to be saved?”

 

Straightening, Ben fixed Poe with a furious look. “I’m going to pretend you never said that.”

 

As Ben strode off down the hallway, Poe tagged along, just barely behind as his shorter legs struggled to keep up. “I’m serious. There are good fairies and there are bad fairies, and Hux is _not_ one of the good ones.”

 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ben bit, then stopped mid-step. “What did you call him?”

 

Poe, suddenly ahead and off-balance, blinked. “Uh… A bad fairy?”

 

“You called him Hux,” Ben said. “You called him Hux when you scried him, too. How do you know his real name? Did Finn tell you?”

 

If Poe had replied _‘well, obviously_ ’, Ben would have left it at that. If Poe had just rolled his eyes and called him an idiot, Ben would have left it at that. If Poe had responded in almost any other way, Ben would have left it at that.

 

Poe paled and drew himself up, blinking quickly and then staring at Ben as if his eyes were tied to the bridge of Ben’s nose. “Yeah. Yes. Yes he did.”

 

Slowly, Ben nodded.

 

“We should go,” he said, gesturing to a golden sconce much like the one they’d entered through. “Before whoever wanted tea finds that girl.”

 

“Yeah.” Poe nodded quickly and reached out to take Ben’s arm. “Yeah, sure.”

 

This sconce took them to a completely different part of the Kingsroads than they’d walked through to find the first, this particular area composed mostly of raindrops and puddles and windowpanes, where the other had predominantly been cutlery and glasses and slabs of polished stone. Off in the far distance, Ben could just barely see the vague looming shadow of one of his statues. Poe set off towards it immediately, leading Ben down a winding path descending into a set of spiral stairs.

 

“This is what, the fourth time we’ve shuffled paper around?” Poe said as he skipped down the stairs. “I don’t suppose his royal Monstrousness gave you any indication of what he was planning. This seems like a bit of a step down from murd—”

 

The moment they hit flat stone again Ben’s hand shot out and grabbed the back of Poe’s collar, choking off his sentence as Ben yanked him backwards and off his feet. Poe went down hard, eyes wide and hands scrabbling at Ben’s embroidered coat as Ben sat on top of him, one of his large hands wrapped around Poe’s throat as the other braced against the translucent stone.

 

“You are going to tell me,” Ben said, slow and calm and hard, “how you know Fox’s true name, and you are going to tell me _now_.”

 

“I told you,” Poe gasped through the press of Ben’s palm. “Finn said—”

 

Ben pushed down, with magic as much as with physical force. Poe’s face darkened and he gurgled, clawing at Ben’s shoulders, magic gathering uselessly in his hands. After a few seconds, Ben let up again, and Poe sucked in a deep, desperate breath.

 

“ _Do not lie to me_ ,” Ben commanded in the Old Tongue.

 

“I—” Poe began, then stopped, his breath gradually slowing. “I recognized him. My mother had pictures. Drawings. A kind of… illustrated guide to fairy kind. That’s all. I swear.”

 

It wasn’t. Ben could feel it, that wriggling in the back of his mind, the push of resistance as Poe fought to disobey him.

 

“ _Do not lie to me_ ,” Ben said again, tightening his grip in an unspoken threat.

 

Poe’s mouth opened, then closed into a grim, determined line.

 

Ben could have pushed it. Poe would have had to obey eventually. But he was sure, now, that Poe would just give him another excuse, another piece of the larger whole, keeping back whatever truth he was trying to hide until Ben dragged it screaming from his pretty lips.

 

So Ben took his hand from Poe’s throat. Sat back. Looked at him. Poe breathed a sigh of relief.

 

Ben touched his fingers to Poe’s forehead and _looked_.

 

Again, Poe’s light was blinding, burning, but Ben knew how to navigate it now, knew he could plunge into the heart of that heat and survive. It didn’t frighten him anymore. He hadn’t been paying attention to the writhing mass of Poe’s thoughts the last time, and now he had trouble differentiating them, like trying to pick out one individual tongue of flame from the depths of a raging inferno. He had flashes — the anger he’d expected, a deep cold current of fear, _no no no no no —_ but nothing that gave any hint as to what Poe was so desperately trying to keep secret. Poe’s hand closed around Ben’s wrist and tried to pry it away, but he could no more move Ben’s hand than blast him with his wind.

 

_Tell me_ , Ben thought, to himself as much as to Poe. _Show me._

 

_NO_ , Poe’s mind screamed.

 

And suddenly the thought was there, summoned by Poe’s very efforts to keep it down. The image of a man flashed through Poe’s mind, a man who despite the short-cropped hair and neatly trimmed beard looked so much like Poe that he had to be a close relative, dressed in feathers and leopard skins, smiling down with bright copper eyes. The image was static, strange, like a memory gone over so many times it had crystallized like amber. _Father_ , the memory whispered, the word wrapped in longing and resentment and aching loneliness Ben recognized all too well.

 

And that wasn’t all. There was another word, sharp with fear like shards of glass.

 

“ _Fairy,_ ” Ben breathed. “Your father was a fairy. You’re a changeling.”

 

Poe didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, his jaw tight, brows pinched in defeat. As Ben withdrew his hand and sat back, Poe didn’t move, breathing shallowly, like a man waiting for the _shink_ of the falling guillotine.

 

Ben stared at him. _Changeling,_ he thought. _That explains a lot._

“Why didn’t you just fucking tell me?!” Ben snapped, suddenly angry, waving a sharp gesture that almost clipped Poe in the face and made him flinch. “Why did you make me drag it from your god damned mind? What the hell is wrong with you!”

 

“What the hell is wrong with _me?_ ” Poe snapped back, anger tinted with pinched bewilderment and hurt. “What the hell is wrong with _you_? You really think it’s okay, just going into someone else’s head? Did you think that maybe there was a _reason_ I didn’t want to tell you?”

 

“Yes,” Ben bit. “Yes, I did. I thought it would be something that actually _mattered_.”

 

“That actually…” Poe repeated, breathing hard and looking at him with eyes that flicked across his face. “You don’t care? About what I am?”

 

“Why would I?” Ben asked.

 

“Most people call me a freak,” Poe said cautiously. “ _Halfbreed_.”

 

Ben leveled him with a look and clambered to his feet. “I’m not most people.”

 

“Apparently not,” Poe said with a kind of reluctant wonder, sitting up and staring at him for a moment before he stood as well. “You really don’t care?”

 

“No,” Ben replied flatly as he started back down the path Poe had put them on. “I really don’t.”

 

They walked in silence for a while, Poe continually glancing at Ben out of the corner of his eye. Discomfort bubbled in Ben’s stomach. He knew Poe despised him, and not without reason, but still, it bothered him that Poe would think he needed to fight _that hard_ to keep such a little secret from him. What did he care if Poe was half fairy? Ben was in love with one himself. If he and Hux could have children—

 

“Three hundred and twenty years,” Poe said suddenly, interrupting Ben’s train of thought. “ _Three hundred and twenty years_ , and not _once_ has someone not cared.”

 

Ben felt blood rise to his face. “What do you want me to say? I don’t care if Phasma is a woman. I don’t care if Mitaka is lower class. I don’t care if you’re half fairy. No-one can help what they are.”

 

“No,” Poe said quietly. “No, they can’t.”

 

 

 

 

_(Author’s Note: The layout and descriptions of the Winter Palace are not accurate to 1818 because the earliest labeled floor plan I could find was from 1840, after the place burned down, and honestly, just… fuck it. Translation, according to Google: “Hello? Who are you?”)_

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

There were patterns, Hux realized not long after he started looking. Groups of fairies who would dance only with each other, and spurned all others. Factions, formed in looks and whispers. And each looked at him a different way.

 

Some of the fairies, perhaps a third, smirked at him. They snickered behind his back or to his face, stuck out their tongues, made rude gestures. One of them, a detestable little goblin by the name of Plutt, stuck out his foot to trip him every time they whirled past each other. Hux added him and the others to an ever-growing list, dreaming of vengeance and the day when the likes of Plutt would sorely regret crossing him.

 

The largest faction, comprising a little more than half of the assembled company, didn’t acknowledge him at all. Their gem-bright eyes skipped right over him, and even when one by chance or Hux’s subtle guile came to dance with him, they behaved as if he did not exist, as if they were dancing with a mannequin or the handle of a broom. Hux discarded these as useless, cowards or indifferents, who would make no matter until the battle was already won or lost.

 

The smallest group watched him.

 

He’d danced with four of them, so far.

 

First, there had been Maz, tiny and brown and grey-haired, whose expression did not change when he glanced her way, though her head tilted subtly back. He was not surprised — if there was a fairy alive who could see through his charade, it would be keen-eyed Maz.

 

The second also did not surprise him; Tekka, tall and white and imperious, was suspicious of everyone. His thin lips pursed when Hux looked at him and he watched Hux all the closer, like an ermine minding a trap. They’d never gotten along.

 

The third did shock him. Hux had always considered Connix flighty and dim, with her golden blonde hair twisted up in fanciful whorls and her face pretty, pale, and vacant. Her brown eyes widened slightly when he met her gaze and she lowered her head, though whether in excitement or fear or some combination of the two Hux did not know. She concerned him, greatly.

 

And last, thus far, came Tabala, with her wiry black hair and her heart-shaped lips and her constantly worried expression. She had almost drawn away from him, and for a moment he felt the world crumbling around his ears. In the end, she stayed, though her thin triangular brows remained tightly furrowed the whole time they danced.

 

They exchanged no words, any of them. But they had all, he knew, danced with Bazine. And they all had their grievances. Maz despised the Faerie Court, had spent every second she could in Takodana Keep before the King’s departure, and had only returned long after the last of her bargainers had died. Tekka adored the human world and its inhabitants with a fierceness and purity that mystified Hux in much the same way as the mortal fascination with God did. Connix, stuttering and flustered, had been humiliated on numerous occasions throughout the years, usually for what Hux now in retrospect saw as no true reason at all. And Tabala was simply terrified of the King, always had been, from the day he was crowned.

 

They were not Hux’s ideal allies. He had not chosen them, nor them him; not one of them had come to Starkiller, not even for curiosity’s sake. Any other day, any other fight, they would have plotted against him.

 

But in _this_ fight, on _this_ day, they were all he had.

 

When he felt Wren drift into the Faerie Court, his heart pattered in his chest. The night before, the King had given Wren another assignment, and Hux always found himself worried, that Wren might be hurt, be killed, be broken. As coincidentally as he could, he turned him and Tabala so he could see, just barely out of the corner of his eye.

 

Wren paused to look up at him, as he always did, then crossed the dance floor to kneel at the foot of the pyramid.

 

“It’s done,” he said, his normal speaking voice loud in the silence.

 

“Good,” the King purred. “You have done well, Kylo Ren. Now, you will wait. Inform me when the time comes.”

 

Wren looked up, creases in his brow. “When the time comes for what?”

 

“You will know,” the King said, and waved his hand.

 

Tabala released Hux before Wren even rose off his knees, and for a moment he was adrift, unsure if his broken self would seek another partner or stand there waiting. He settled on the latter, only because enough time had passed that the decision was already made, and Wren was striding towards him.

 

Compared to Tabala, Wren’s hands were furnaces, burning into his palm and his hip, promising more delicious heat Hux didn’t dare accept. Yet Wren pulled him close, and Hux allowed it, giving himself a heartbeat to breathe in Wren’s scent before he turned his face away.

 

It wasn’t enough. But, like Tabala and Connix and Tekka and Maz, it was all he had.

 

It would have to do.


	8. May

 

**May**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Poe wasn’t the same, after Russia. He was quieter, watched Ben almost constantly, listened more than he talked. Around the others, he was as he always had been, snipping and snapping and bringing up Ben’s sins at every opportunity, but when they were alone — as they increasingly were, with the others occupied with the ever-more-difficult task of gathering supplies and information without being arrested — he would shift into something still and watchful, even gentle, at times. Ben wasn’t sure he liked it.

 

“We need to let it flower longer,” Ben mumbled to himself, as much to fill the silence as anything else. He plucked a stalk of kernel-less wheat, crushed the withered head and tossed it to the ground. “Or find a way to pollinate it ourselves, but that’ll take almost as long, and we can’t spare the magicians. How long, do you think? Five days? A week?”

 

Poe stared at him, his hands thrust loosely into his pockets. “How should I know? I’m not a farmer.”

 

“No, but…” Ben gestured at him. “You’re ten thousand years old. I figured you might have some relevant experience.”

 

Poe glanced around as if someone else would hear, though the nearest forms of sentient life were Ozymandias and Isis, a good hundred yards away and arguing over the most efficient way to harvest what grain there was. “I’m not ten thousand years old, and I don’t.”

 

“You used to have a sense of humor,” Ben grumbled as he slashed his hand through more useless wheat.

 

“I used to have free will, too,” Poe retorted.

 

Ben looked at him, then sighed. “Fair enough.”

 

They walked a little ways through the field, as if a few feet to the west things would be different. They weren’t. Ben smacked the rows of grain again.

 

“If we leave it five days, that’s three harvests a month,” he said. “Twenty a year if we push the growing season. If we build the greenhouses Ozymandias suggested, we can make that forty. Call it a tonne of wheat per hectare per harvest, over sixty hectares of usable land, that’s… two thousand four hundred tonnes of wheat a year. That’s enough for what, seven hundred and fifty people? And that’s assuming the soil holds up. We’re going to need more land.”

 

“What’s with the green door?” Poe suddenly asked.

 

Ben stopped, glancing at him. “Bored?”

 

Poe smirked darkly. “Bored and trying to distract you from the sentence that comes after ‘we’re going to need more land’.”

 

Huffing, Ben played with the grain. He’d known Poe would ask about it, sooner or later. Every time they passed through the officer’s quarters, Poe looked at it. Given that it was the brightest bit of color in the entire compound Ben wasn’t surprised.

 

“It’s Guiomar’s door,” he said eventually, hoping to leave it at that.

 

“Guiomar?” Poe asked.

 

“One of the Knights,” Ben replied with a sigh. “First to join, after Phasma and Mitaka. He… passed.”

 

Poe nodded, his eyes roaming over Ben’s face the way Fox’s used to, in the early days. Ben shifted on his feet, glancing over at Ozymandias. The magician had a fistful of wheat and was waving it in Isis’ face, shouting something Ben couldn’t quite make out.

 

“The first time you sunk our ships,” Ben said, not entirely sure why he was saying it, other than the silence, “we lost a lot of men. Almost half. They couldn’t swim, or they got caught in the rigging, under the decks. Guiomar was one of them. The door… Ozymandias did that. Guiomar had a thing for green. I think they used to be friends. I don’t know, Ozymandias doesn’t talk about him much.”

 

Ben still remembered Ozymandias shouting Guiomar’s name, fighting against Phasma to plunge back into the icy water, trying to find Guiomar in the mess of wreckage and bodies and struggling men. And he remembered the day the same current that had saved them washed a green-haired corpse onto their shore. He’d never told the others about that. He’d sunk the ravaged body into the stone and let the rest imagine the crushing peace of the deep Atlantic.

 

Poe’s eyes finally left him, drifting over to Ozymandias. He huffed a sigh.

 

“Rey would be furious with me.”

 

Ben blinked at him. “Why?”

 

“We have… Philosophical differences,” Poe replied. “As far as I’m concerned, the moment you sign up to help the guy trying to take over the world, you’re fair game. She thinks… Well, she thinks you can’t really blame someone for falling for your lies.”

 

“They aren’t lies,” Ben snipped, yanking a handful of wheat out of the ground. “I’m following through, you know that.”

 

“Her words, not mine,” Poe said with a shrug. “What can I say, she’s not a soldier. She’s never seen war. She doesn’t know what it’s like.”

 

Ben looked at him. “And you do?”

 

“I’m three hundred years old,” Poe answered. For a moment, he looked it. “I grew up watching Cortés destroy everything I’d ever loved. I was around for the Seven Years’ War and the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, and now your revolution, whatever the history book’ll call it. The things I’ve seen…” Poe paused for a moment, then shook his head as if shaking loose a sour memory. “The point is, I know wars aren’t won without casualties. She might begrudge you what you did in Portugal, but I don’t. You were just doing what you had to.”

 

Ben hesitated. Looked at his feet. “No, I wasn’t.”

 

Poe glanced up at him, but said nothing.

 

“I could have said no,” Ben continued. “I almost did. It wasn’t my fight.”

 

“Then why’d you join up?” Poe asked.

 

Ben shrugged, toed at the dirt. “Fox said it would be good practice. Said, what was the point of learning all that I’d learned if I wasn’t going to use it. Not that I’m blaming him. Whoever said it was his fault what I’ve done, they were wrong. He might have pushed, but it wasn’t his fault, any more than it was Napoleon’s or Wellington’s. I did what I did because I wanted to. Because I liked it. Because I was good at it. It’s no-one’s fault but mine.”

 

Poe didn’t reply. He stared at Ben oddly, his head tilted slightly to the side and his strange eyes glinting copper in the pale spring sunlight. Ben felt heat rise to his cheeks and toed at the dirt again, prying up a rough black stone and kicking it away into the wheat.

 

“We should go back,” he said, scratching his shoulder. “No point in standing around in a field doing nothing.”

 

Poe just nodded.

 

 

 

 

_(Author’s note; those calculations Ren does are as close to accurate as I could make them given I couldn’t find data for tonnes/hectare from earlier than 1961, and also that I know nothing about farming.)_

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Through no machinations of his own — against them, in fact — Hux found himself dancing with Plutt.

 

How the fairy had wormed his way into Hux’s path, he wasn’t certain. Hux had simply turned around and there he’d been, grabbing Hux’s hands and pulling him into a dance before he could think of a way to flee from him without attracting attention.

 

Plutt was everything Hux despised in a fairy. Though he could have chosen any human shape, he picked one that was fat, with stubby arms and legs and thick square fingers, an eggplant of a nose and piggy little eyes and a distinct absence of neck. And fair enough, for his appearance matched his personality — greedy, grubbing, more goblin than Fae. Hux had been to Plutt’s Keep precisely once, and left feeling nauseated from the gold coating every surface that wasn’t already plastered with gems. If he had managed to avoid interacting with the man for the rest of eternity, Hux would have considered it a blessing.

 

And here they were. Dancing.

 

And Plutt was watching him, as keenly as Maz ever had.

 

Hux hardly dared to breathe. He would not look up, not for Plutt, wouldn’t risk the ruination of his plans to solicit the help of a beast he couldn’t stand. Plutt’s smell filled his nose, suet and grease and metal, strong enough to make Hux’s throat close. He was doing it on purpose, Hux was sure, trying to get a reaction. He would not find one. Hux’s will was a stronger one than that.

 

Hours passed. Plutt was a surprisingly competent dancer, given the bandiness of his legs and the club-like nature of his feet. He gave Hux no reason to switch, but for the smell and the leer and the bubble of revulsion in his gut. He allowed none of it to rise to the surface, kept his expression slack and calm and empty, the way half the fairies in the Court did with him. Did they feel this way about him, he wondered idly; did their stomachs roll at his touch, their lips threaten to curl into a snarl, their tongues bunch back in their mouths to block the taste of the smell?

 

And then, as they happened to arc around to the far edge of the Court, as far from the King as it was possible to be, Plutt leaned in close.

 

“I know what you’re up to,” he purred into Hux’s ear. “Naughty boy.”

 

Hux stiffened, almost tripped, gripped so tightly to Plutt’s shoulder that the man’s ever-down-turned lips pulled back into a snarl, or perhaps it was intended to be a smile. The fairy let out no alarm, called no attention to them, went back to dancing as if nothing had happened, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three as Hux’s heart hammered a tarantella in his chest.

 

Hux had no idea what that meant. Except, perhaps, that the lines were not as clear as he thought.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Poddleton brought them a lunch of cheese and fruit, and they ate together in silence, Poe staring at Ben all the while. He seemed to have something on his mind, something to say, but he never tried, chewing on peach slices and watching Ben fiddle with a sprig of grapes.

 

Eventually, Ben couldn’t stand it anymore.

 

“If you keep staring at me like that, I’m going to get the wrong idea,” he grumbled, plucking off the last of the grapes.

 

For a moment, he wasn’t sure Poe was going to respond. Then Poe picked up a piece of cheddar and broke it in half, finally looking down as he spoke.

 

“And what idea would that be?”

 

Picking at the skin of the grape, Ben shrugged, feeling a little flushed. Poe sighed and tossed the cheese back onto his platter.

 

“I don’t know what you are,” he said, frustration in his voice as he sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Every time I think I have you figured out, you say something that… Why can’t you just be blatantly evil? Kidnap pretty girls, murder babies, make it nice and easy for me, for God’s sake.”

 

Ben found himself smiling, little petals of grape skin fluttering onto the table. “If you want, I could find some puppies to kick.”

 

“That would be helpful, yeah.”

 

Just as Ben popped the grape into his mouth, the door smashed inward, black driftwood cracking against the wall with a thunderous bang. Ben shot to his feet and Poe knocked his chair over in a mad scramble to stand. In the doorway stood Mitaka, his shoulders hunched high around his ears and a bright flush staining his cheeks.

 

“That got away from me, sorry,” he squeaked, even as he was shoved forward by an impatient Phasma.

 

“What’s going on?” Ben asked, stepping around the table. The two of them weren’t due back for another four hours at least.

 

“Show him,” Phasma said darkly, shoving Mitaka forward again.

 

Mitaka hesitated for a moment, glancing between Phasma and Ben and Poe and the others, magicians and fairies alike, who were filtering their way through the doorway. Swallowing, he took a folded newspaper from under his arm and held it out with a slightly trembling hand. Before Ben could take it, Poe snagged it, flipping it open and scanning the front page.

 

“Well, that’s not good,” he said dully, handing the paper over. “Look.”

 

_Embassy Seized_ , the headline read. According to the story below, Tsar Alexander had stormed the British Embassy in St. Petersburg, taking all members of the staff, including the various lords and ladies in residence, hostage. In exchange for their return he was demanding the resignations of the Prime Minister and his entire cabinet, along with a formal apology from King George the Fourth for ‘interfering in Russian affairs’. The British had refused, and were considering the attack a formal declaration of war.

 

“Did you do this?” Phasma asked, her voice low and dark and edging into angry.

 

Ben hadn’t looked in the envelope. He hadn’t looked in _any_ of the envelopes. He’d just taken them from various desks in various offices and put them somewhere else, somewhere someone else would find them. The King had made it very clear that the seals were to remain unbroken. He could have said he hadn’t known, that he’d had no idea, that he was as surprised as she was.

 

He didn’t.

 

“Is this what we’re doing now?” Phasma asked, jabbing at the newspaper. “It’s one thing to fight a war, and it’s another to provoke one _we’re not even in_.”

 

“This is why I didn’t involve you,” Ben mumbled, tossing the newspaper onto the driftwood table.

 

“You think that makes it better?” Phasma stepped up to him, glaring down with her icy blue eyes. “When you recruited me, you told me you needed me, because I was the only one with the balls to stand up to you. I’m standing.”

 

“This is the line you want to draw?” Ben asked, gesturing down at the headline. “ _This_? Not invading Iceland, not taking the British army—”

 

“That served the cause,” Phasma retorted. “This does not. And you know it. You’re allowing your personal interests to interfere with our objective. This whole thing with Fox has you all—”

 

“Don’t you want Nettle back?” Ben snapped.

 

“Of course I want Nettle back!” Phasma balled her hands into tight fists. “I’m just not willing to sell my soul to do it!”

 

Ben looked up at her, jaw tight and eyes hard. “Well, I am.”

 

For a moment, he thought she was going to hit him. Her lip furled and her knuckles went white. Then she eased back, taking a deep breath and fixing him with a deeply disappointed look that hurt more than a blow ever could.

 

“I should have known,” she said, shaking her head. “This is what you are. This is what you’ve always been. A small, selfish little man who likes to play at saving the world. You were never serious. You just wanted the glory.”

 

Ben’s first instinct was anger. He wanted to close his hand around her throat and make her take that back, wanted to shout, wanted to rage and tell her how _wrong_ she was, didn’t she understand, Fox had to come first. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the glass egg.

 

As he went to whip it against the far wall, Phasma grabbed his wrist.

 

“No more of this,” she intoned. “No more tantrums, no more secret missions, no more reckless behavior. You will fall in line and act as a soldier should, or you will no longer be welcome here. Do you understand?”

 

Ben stared at her. Who did she think she _was_ , giving _him orders_ , _him_ , after everything he had done? “You wouldn’t even be here without me.”

 

“No,” Phasma agreed. “We wouldn’t.”

 

He looked at her, at the others. Gaius stared at him with the same old anger that hadn’t left his eyes since George, Silver standing next to him like a wolf guarding its cub. Ozymandias seemed sad, his thin brows pinched and his gaze never quite meeting Ben’s, while Isis glared with a chilly apprehension, as if he were a barrel of oil next to a flame. Reed’s expression mirrored Phasma’s, disappointed and disillusioned, his arm wrapped around Mitaka’s shoulders. Mitaka himself looked stricken, torn, his lips pressed thin and his brows furrowed, hugging himself.

 

Suddenly, Ben laughed.

 

“I can’t believe I’m being ousted from my own revolution,” he said, grinning. “You think you can do this by yourselves? You think you can do _anything_? You _need_ me. I’m your _king_. I _made_ you.”

 

“No,” Phasma said coolly. “You used us for your own ends, and we deserve better. _The cause_ deserves better. Do this gracefully Kylo. Please.”

 

“Fuck you,” Ben spit, wrenching his arm from her grasp. “You’re _nothing_. _I made you._ And I can destroy you in an _instant_.”

 

“You and Fox together couldn’t take me alone,” Phasma replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “There are seven of us. You’re welcome to try.”

 

He wanted to. For a moment, he wanted to, wanted to reach out and seize their glimmers and bend them to his will the way he had bent Poe. He wanted to make them suffer, make them _kneel_ , take all the parts of them that hated him and boil them away until they would never question him again, never disobey, never stare at him with disappointed eyes. Until they loved him again. He narrowed his focus, felt them, the magicians bright and the fairies brighter still, so bright they burned, but he could take them. He could take _anything_ , would _do_ anything, whatever it took. He wasn’t afraid to be a monster.

 

Then he realized what he was doing and took a stumbling step back, the glass egg falling from his fingertips to shatter against the basalt floor. In a rush, he grabbed Poe’s arm, knelt down, pressed his hand to the shards and said the words.

 

Phasma was right. He couldn’t be there any more.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Hux was panicking.

 

He didn’t trust Plutt. Couldn’t trust Plutt. Plutt was a grimy little snake, a weasel, he was going to betray him, he was only waiting for Wren to return when the damage would be the greatest and there was _nothing_ Hux could do. He wanted to rip Plutt’s heart out and tear it to pieces with his bare hands, wanted to stomp it into paste and spit on the remains but anything he did, anything against him, would break his cover just as surely as any word from Plutt.

 

Not even on his knees at the King’s feet had he felt so afraid. The only moment that came close was turning his head and seeing blood blooming out of the bullet-hole in Wren’s chest, and the seven terrifying days after.

 

He had to think of something. He had to find a way. _Now_. Before Wren returned.

 

He’d heard of a road between the Faerie Realm and the Kingsroads but he didn’t know where it was, and he couldn’t know if the spell keeping him in the realm anchored him to the Last Keep as well unless he tried to leave it, and he couldn’t try to leave it without the King knowing. If he or one of his ‘allies’ could get a blade in the back of the King’s head, they might be able to paralyze him, at least temporarily. None of them had weapons, and they had to get it right the first time, because if they failed there would be no other.

 

Before he was ready, far before, the space in the back of his mind where Wren was brightened. Hux tilted his head just a little to the side.

 

Immediately, he knew something was wrong. Wren stood with his head bowed and his hand gripping his shoulder, staring at the black marble floor for a long moment without moving. And when he did move, it wasn’t to look for Hux, but to start across the dance floor to the bottom of the steps leading up to the King’s throne. He didn’t kneel.

 

“Russia and Britain are at war,” he said in a clear, dull voice. “Is that what you wanted?”

 

“You are wounded,” the King drawled, the moment before Hux noticed the dark smears of crimson on the silver slashing of Wren’s sleeve. His heart surged to his throat.

 

“I cut my hand,” Wren replied flatly. “It’s nothing.”

 

“Good,” the King said, his long nails tapping on the arm of his throne. “When you awaken, return to the American South and await further instruction.”

 

Wren didn’t acknowledge the command. His head remained bowed, his eyes on the steps, his bleeding hand gripping tight to the fabric of his sleeve. Hux realized he was openly staring, cursed himself, looked away.

 

“Something troubles you,” the King noted. “Speak.”

 

Wren said nothing. The King waited, watching, his head tilting to the side in something Hux could only class as curiosity. Wren shifted on his feet, pawed at his own shoulder, at last glanced up to see Hux still watching him out of the corner of his eye. Wren’s brows pinched and he seemed to steel himself, turning his face up towards the King and tightening his jaw.

 

“When does it end?” he asked. “When will it be over?”

 

“ _Over?_ ” the King repeated, tilting his head the other way. Danger thrummed in that word like the rumble of thunder, a warning Wren picked up on immediately, taking a step back and changing his tack.

 

“We had a bargain,” he said, his voice strong but still, as it always was with the King, too high. “You promised I could have him back. I’m holding up my end.”

 

The King tilted his head again, the corners of his terrible hollow eyes crinkling and his mouth drawing back into a twisted smile as he hummed what could almost have been a laugh. He sat back in his throne, considered Wren for a moment, curled his fingers.

 

“Come.”

 

Wren hesitated, but in the end his feet carried him up the steps in long, quick strides. Wren was a big man, but before the King he looked like a child, his shoulders hunched as if expecting a switch. The knuckles of his bleeding hand bleached white. Hux’s own grip on Plutt’s pudgy shoulder tightened.

 

When Wren reached the top of the pyramid, the King beckoned him closer until he could reach out with one massive, bony hand and stroke Wren’s hair. Hux’s stomach turned, and Wren’s head ducked as if he couldn’t stand the touch just as much as Hux couldn’t stand the sight of it. Slowly, the King’s fingers slid down to hook under Wren’s wide chin. For a moment, Hux was certain there would be new blood on his claw, tensed, ready to do whatever it took to keep Wren safe — but the King only lifted Wren’s face, the grandfather and not the monster that he was.

 

“I see into your mind, Kylo Ren,” the King purred as he caught Wren’s eyes with his own. Hux knew what that was like, how impossible it was to look away, that feeling of falling, of opening up, of being revealed. “I see the truth of you, even when you do not.”

 

Wren sucked in a breath. Hux was staring again, but he couldn’t stand to do anything but, his heart skittering high and weak in his chest. Plutt squeezed his hand, and for a moment Hux was doubly afraid, but Plutt said nothing, simply turned his eyes from Hux to the scene atop the pyramid and back, his scowl perpetual and unchanging.

 

“ _Good. Evil_.” The King spoke the words like curses, his thumb sweeping across Wren’s cheek. “These are nothing but paltry Christian platitudes. You, my Kylo Ren, are above such petty morality. For you, there exists no such thing as _sin_ or _virtue_. There is only strength and weakness. Purge this fear you feel from your heart. Still your thoughts, and worry not about _being good_. You are a wolf, and wolves do not concern themselves with the bleating of the sheep.”

 

The King’s hand withdrew and he settled back again, looking down at a Wren who stared at him with wide, dark eyes and parted lips.

 

“Ask,” the King said with a curl of amusement in his voice, “and you shall receive.”

 

Wren’s mouth worked, and when he finally spoke, it was in a voice so soft Hux could hardly hear it. “Give him back to me. Please.”

 

The King smiled again, a frightful thing like the rictus grin of a corpse, and waved his hand. Magic tingled on Hux’s skin and a section of one of the walls sunk backwards, splitting and shifting and changing into a recessed pair of silver and ebony doors.

 

“Go,” the King said, “and know you are rewarded.”

 

For a moment, no-one moved. Not Wren, not Hux, not the assembled company. Then Plutt shoved Hux forwards and waved his meaty hand.

 

“Well?” the fairy said. “Go on, then.”

 

Hux stood, adrift, lost, afraid and excited and barely breathing. Wren turned, looking over his shoulder again and again as he took the stairs, slowly at first and then quickly and then two at a time until he hit the ground running, until he came striding across the dance floor like a thundercloud and Hux reached out and Wren took Hux’s hand in his and his touch was like fire, and together the two of them went towards the doors and the doors didn’t disappear and the King said nothing and there were whispers all around them and Hux didn’t care. Hux _couldn’t_ care. All that mattered was the heat of Wren’s skin.

 

They pushed through the doors and Wren turned and grabbed his hips and pushed him back against the ebony, Wren’s mouth crushing against his own in a kiss like murder, a kiss that killed the last vestiges of Hux’s mind and all thoughts of the King and the Court vanished like mist before the burning sun. Wren’s hands slid down over his arse, gripping his thighs, lifting him up so his legs could twine around Wren’s waist and press them close, so close, yet not nearly close enough. Hux gasped and Wren’s tongue thrust into his mouth and a fumbling snap of Hux’s fingers and they were naked, Wren’s skin blistering, his heartbeat thundering in quick opposition to Hux’s as they kissed and nipped and bit as if they could make up for all the longing at once.

 

The angle wasn’t right and Wren lifted Hux’s legs higher, pulling them up between desperate kisses until Hux was bent almost in half. A human being would have been uncomfortable, wouldn’t have been able to breathe or support themselves but Hux wasn’t human and it didn’t matter that his knees were pressed against his shoulders, all that mattered was the heat of Wren’s rapidly hardening cock pressing against his hole and the stretch as Hux opened up to him and the bone-deep pleasure as Wren slid home. Hux’s head fell back, his eyes slipping closed, a long moan trembling out of his mouth as Wren gasped into his throat.

 

“Wren,” Hux breathed as Wren began to move, slow and stuttering, struggling to keep some thin filament of control. Hux didn’t want control. “Wren, fuck me, just fuck me, please—”

 

Wren obeyed.

 

They’d fucked up against walls before, but never like this, never so desperate, Wren driving into him relentlessly until all Hux could do was sink his nails into Wren’s back and take it. He never wanted to do anything else, never wanted to stop, wanted to spend the rest of eternity just like this, with Wren hot and thick and hard inside him and Wren’s teeth scraping over the pulse in his throat and Wren’s hands sweeping over him like tongues of fire. With every thrust came a moan, from Wren or him or both, wrenched from aching lungs and parted lips and a deep emptiness now filled. It was too much, too fast, after too long, and Hux couldn’t take it, couldn’t begin to last. Heat built up inside him agonizingly quickly, and he tried to hold it back, tried to focus on anything other than the cock pounding into him and the body pressed against him and _Wren_ , Wren’s voice and Wren’s scent and Wren’s pulse beating inside him and around him and through him, and he couldn’t, couldn’t begin to. He’d wanted this for _so long_.

 

He came with a choked sob, arching up as his toes curled and every muscle in his body clenched. Wren didn’t stop, didn’t even slow, his hips stuttering a little at the tightening around his cock, but keeping on, harder than ever. Hux couldn’t breathe, every snap of Wren’s hips sending another shudder rippling through him until he felt he would shake apart.

 

“Wren,” Hux groaned, the same way Wren groaned _God_. “Wren, Wren, _Wren_ , fuck, _Wren_ , come inside me, come—”

 

Wren slammed into him, once, twice, so deep Hux thought he would die, and glorious heat flooded inside him, filling up all the empty spaces Wren’s distance had left. He was overflowing, liquid, a melted candle reduced to nothing before Wren’s flame. It was everything he’d ever wanted and more.

 

After a trembling second, Wren’s legs gave out from under him and they sank together, tangled and entwined, sweat dripping from the ends of Wren’s hair to roll over Hux’s skin like water skittering over a heated skillet. For a moment, they stayed that way, both breathing heavily, both with trembling hands. Then Wren wrapped his arms around Hux’s chest and turned them, his back to the other door and Hux in his lap. His eyes closed, Hux hummed contentedly, nuzzling into the salty dampness of Wren’s throat, greedy for his heat and his heartbeat and the slowing rise and fall of his broad chest.

 

For a while, all he did was feel. The slick wet heat of the blood from Wren’s wounded hand smearing across his back. The stickiness of drying sweat gluing them together. Wren’s seed held tight within him. He was never going to give that up, that little piece of Wren the King couldn’t take away.

 

The thought sobered him, and he reluctantly opened his eyes, turned his head, looked around. He’d expected to find an empty room, or something suitably generic, but this didn’t surprise him — a near perfect copy of their room in the compound, with the driftwood table and the silver bed and the rickety old desk they’d taken from the room above the bakery. Even the books on the bookshelves were perfect, cracks in the leather-bound spines exactly where they were supposed to be and the books themselves slightly out of order in the same absent-minded way Wren always left them, seeing little enough difference between _Vinculus_ and _Veracles_ to necessitate adherence to the alphabet.

 

Some part of him — the part that wanted, even now, _especially_ now, to believe that he was wrong — found the gesture thoughtful. The rest of him saw it for what it was; proof that the King had been watching them, even before his return. Proof that this was planned, that they were being manipulated, that this was no gift, no kindness, no reward, but a carrot to keep them running down the line.

 

Suddenly Hux felt a prickle on the back of his neck, as if invisible eyes were watching him. Without weaving a spell, there was no way to tell if the King was watching them, and if he was, then weaving the spell would be all he needed to give them away. He could only assume they were being surveilled, their image shining out of the King’s silver bowl.

 

“Stop that,” Wren mumbled out of nowhere.

 

Hux hesitated. “Stop what?”

 

“Thinking,” Wren replied, nuzzling into Hux’s hair. “You’re going all stiff and I don’t like it.”

 

Again, Hux paused, schooling his breathing, schooling his expression, trying to play out the world through the eyes of a man he no longer was. Eventually he turned his face into Wren’s neck and muttered, “I don’t deserve you,” hoping Wren would understand.

 

He did. Hux felt the sudden tension in his muscles, the pause in his breathing, the shiver running up his spine.

 

“No, you don’t,” Wren replied quietly, his fingers playing at Hux’s hip. “You deserve better.”

 

“I failed you,” Hux said, the regret in his voice not entirely feigned. He ran his hand down Wren’s arm and took him by the wrist, turning his palm up to the light. “Look, you’re hurt. I should have been there to protect you.”

 

“It’s fine,” Wren bit gently, pulling his hand away. “It’s nothing.”

 

Irritation pinched between Hux’s brows. He flicked Wren lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t you ‘never mind’ me, little bird. Not again. No-one dreams a wound that doesn’t matter.”

 

Wren chewed on the inside of his cheek, breathing slowly into Hux’s hair. Hux waited. Better to let Wren find the words than risk him saying something they would regret the King hearing, though in this particular instance he doubted Wren would tell him anything the King had not already gleaned from Wren’s mind.

 

That thought terrified him. The King, in Wren’s head, rifling through all his secrets, all his fears, all his doubts. Hux had given Wren only the most basic training in resisting the intrusion of another mind, trusting that no other magician alive could rival Wren in sheer talent. He hadn’t expected the King. He hadn’t expected any of this.

 

“I…” Wren began, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “I’m not part of the revolution anymore. They kicked me out. Phasma and the others. They said I was being selfish.”

 

Sudden fury flared in Hux’s stomach. His nails scraped over Wren’s skin as he closed his hands into fists, and his list got seven names longer. “ _Traitors_. I’ll tear them apart. I’ll—”

 

“No,” Wren said firmly, tightening his grip. “They’re right. I’ve been so caught up with you… I’m not fighting for the cause anymore. It’s… It’s safer this way.”

 

Wren’s voice was heavy, dark, each breath coming closer to a sigh. Hux drew back, took Wren’s face in his hands, swept his thumbs over Wren’s pale, soft cheeks. Wren’s eyes were deep, wet pools, his brows drawn together, his plush lips down-turned. He looked less like a wolf and more like a lost lamb, begging to be brought back to the fold.

 

“The weak are always jealous of the strong,” Hux reminded him. “They did not swear fealty to the _cause_. They swore fealty to _you_. They are traitors, and they will be punished.”

 

Wren pursed his lips and looked away. Hux slid his hands back, running them through Wren’s sweat-damp hair. He didn’t want Wren to be sad, or troubled, or worried. He wanted his little bird to smile.

 

“Let us speak of other things,” Hux said, pressing a kiss to Wren’s forehead. “Ask me a thing.”

 

They played this game sometimes; ‘ _What was Alexander the Great’s favorite color’_ and ‘ _What’s it like to stand on the surface of the sun’_ and ‘ _What do bears dream about in the winter?_ ’ Little curiosities, little wonderments, idle talk for when both of them were too tired or rutted-out to speak strategy.

 

Wren let out a questioning hum, nuzzling into Hux’s throat. His hands slid up Hux’s back, then down again, his blunt nails sparking little shivers under Hux’s skin.

 

“I don’t know,” Wren muttered eventually, kissing the top of Hux’s collarbone. “Pick something.”

 

It was Hux’s turn to hum, staring off to the side for a moment as he tried to think of something peaceful, something as far removed from the hell that was their present as possible.

 

“The old days, then” he decided, playing with Wren’s hair. “Before the splitting of the worlds.”

 

Wren looked at him. “I thought you couldn’t remember?”

 

“I can’t, really,” Hux replied. “Not the way I remember now. The days had no names then, no months or years, and so I did not count them, and the whole of time blurred and faded into one long day without beginning or end, stretching into infinity in every direction. But there are moments I recall, things, places, people.” Hux reached down to take Wren’s hand again and began to trace the wounds, the thin red lines disappearing beneath his touch. “I remember running naked in an autumn wood full of trees that died a thousand years before the rise of man. I remember talking to the earth and the sky and the sea like old friends. I remember hairy humped elephants appearing out of a swirling blizzard like ghosts, and monstrous cats with giant fangs and terrible birds with each wing longer than a man is tall. I remember—”

 

He laughed a little, biting his lip and nosing at Wren’s black locks.

 

“I remember the first time I saw red hair. Thin and wiry and dark, sticking up in every direction like curly fire. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I wore that woman’s form for an age, before I found this one.”

 

Wren paused. “You were a woman?”

 

“I have been many things over the years,” Hux replied. Even though the slashes were gone, Hux continued to play with Wren’s hand, feeling the bones and the creases in his big, strong palms. “Men and women both, and many things in between.”

 

Again, Wren paused, and Hux could almost hear his mind clunking away. “Could you do it again?”

 

Hux smiled into Wren’s hair. “Bored of me already?”

 

“No,” Wren said swiftly, grabbing onto Hux’s hips as if Hux might fly away. “No.”

 

“I could, if you wanted me to,” Hux said quietly, lacing Wren’s fingers in his. “I could be anything you like. I could even… be _her_ , if you wanted me to.”

 

Wren hesitated for just long enough to make Hux’s heart ache. “No. Has the King always been King?”

 

Of all the ways to change the subject, this was not the most elegant. Still, Hux let it slide, with a smile and a kind of bemused amusement at his shy little bird, too concerned for Hux’s feelings to ask for what he wanted, as if shifting into another form — even hers — for a few moments would be such an ordeal.

 

“No, not always,” Hux replied. “He wasn’t even the first to claim the title. But the rest of us were all little kings, squabbling over a few dozen supporters who had as much fun switching sides as we did trying to win them over. It was a game to us. It wasn’t a game to him.” Hux wound a lock of Wren’s hair around one finger, remembering that overcast day by the Tigris. “He came to the Kingsmoot alone. When it was his time to speak, he gave us all a choice; kneel, or be punished. We laughed at him, until he tore Vaako’s tongue out. I can’t recall seeing fairy blood before that. After, there were oceans.”

 

He’d never spoken of it. Every fairy remembered the moment in vivid detail, and no mortal had ever bothered to ask. The King’s hand yanking open Vaako’s square jaw, his clawed hand reaching in past Vaako’s sharp shark teeth, the fountain of golden red spilling from Vaako’s thin, trembling lips. To this very day, Vaako spoke with his teeth clenched.

 

Hux had discovered something that day. A craving, deep and abiding, for that kind of power — to be looked at the way the assembled company had looked at the man who was to be their King, in horror and slack-jawed awe, falling to their knees one by one. Before that moment, his life had been more or less purposeless, meandering this way and that in pursuit of whatever pleasure he happened to find. After, he’d pursued the same dream, over and over; an empire of his own, if not in the Faerie Realm then the mortal, with supplicants and slaves and a throne to perch on, and if he was not Emperor in name then the would be the power behind, the god only ever whispered of, feared and loved in equal measure. He’d had it, several times, in China and Mongolia and Rome and the old cities of Mesopotamia. Even England bore his mark.

 

But mortal things never lasted. Bargainers died, empires crumbled, and so he had to start again, and again, and again, and never tired of the pursuit. Even his failures were diverting, more so than rivers and woods and the unending, unremarkable passage of the days.

 

“I was going to overthrow him, originally,” Hux said, lost in thought and memory. “But the opportunity never came, and I was busy with other things, and he was a good King, for the most part. He knew, I think, what I intended, but he never punished me for it. He forgave me. And I loved him for that.”

 

Wren squeezed his hand, and in an odd way, he felt Wren understood.

 

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Hux said suddenly, sliding his hand from Wren’s grasp and bringing it up to cup Wren’s face again. “Who knows how much time we have left. We’d best make the most of it.”

 

“Yeah,” Wren said, running his hands up and down Hux’s sides. “Yeah, we should.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Ben woke up smiling, feeling better than he had in weeks. The cuts on his hand ached and his back was sore from sleeping on the ground, but the building desperation in the back of his mind was sated, at least for now.

 

“Oh, thank god,” Poe said, still sitting against the nearby larch as he had been when Ben fell asleep. “You’re awake. Had a good night, I take it?”

 

Blurred by sleep, Ben didn’t quite understand what he meant. Then he sat up and felt an uncomfortable crusty stiffness to the front of his drawers and flushed, scrambling to pull his knees up to his chest as if he could retroactively hide what happened. Poe, dark sleepless circles under his eyes, huffed a laugh.

 

“Seven times in one night. That’s truly impressive. Tell me, was it just Fox, or was there some kind of fairy orgy action going on?”

 

Face burning hot, Ben summoned a bit of magic to clean his clothes. “Just Fox.”

 

“Well, I guess you must have really missed him,” Poe quipped as he stood, stretching his arms over his head. “So do we have a destination now, or are we just going to wander through the Kingsroads for the rest of our lives?”

 

Appreciating the change of subject, Ben took a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet. “The South.”

 

Poe paused mid-stretch. “You’re going home?”

 

“No,” Ben replied, cursing Rey and her blabbing mouth.

 

Poe looked at him for a moment, then nodded, holding out his arm. “You have a specific place in mind?”

 

Ben sighed. “Anywhere but Virginia.”


	9. North Carolina

**North Carolina**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Even a broken Hux, he thought, would perk up after a night with Wren. And to stay wounded without signs of healing was tantamount to admitting the wound had never been real in the first place. So Hux, with the utmost of care, let his eyes wander.

 

The first thing he noticed was the silver bowl. The King had pulled it into his lap scarcely a minute after Wren woke, and did not look up from it for the duration of the day. What he was watching, Hux hadn’t a clue, though it cast vague gleams of green and blue and white across his monochrome clothes, and there was sometimes what sounded like a murmur of conversation, though whether it actually came from the bowl or one of the many pockets of whispers scattered throughout the hall Hux didn’t know.

 

The King’s downcast eyes made the other fairies bold, and the factions broke apart even more sharply than they had been before, splitting into separate swirling groups like droplets of oil in water. Hux sided firmly with the watchers, as did Bazine, still whispering her blasphemy into any ear that would listen.

 

She caught his eye, not long after Wren left and Hux returned to the dance. Slowly, carefully, deliberately, she nodded. He looked away, just in case, but a thrill shot through his chest.

 

He had to be careful, more careful than ever. The implication of what he had told Wren the night before was not lost on him; it was possible, likely, even, that the King already knew a revolution was brewing. He had thus far chosen to take no action, and why would he? God did not trouble himself with the scheming of atheists. He likely assumed that either nothing would come of it, as nothing had come of Hux’s plans before, or that any attempt at overthrowing him would be ultimately unsuccessful. And while that was almost certainly the case, there was a thin thread of real hope in Hux’s chest that had not been there before.

 

In reminiscing, Hux had remembered many forgotten things. He had remembered the early days of the King’s rule, when every command was backed, not with the power of magic, but with the power of fear. The magic had only come later, Hux recalled, as the weight of the world shifted and the fairies became so accustomed to the new order that it seemed to them — as it seemed to the peasants of many a land — that the King’s power was natural, that his position above them was ordained, that it could not be any other way.

 

But the King, under all of it, was just another fairy. As Bazine had said, he may have been the strongest of them, but they were indeed many, and Hux had seen time and time again that empires didn’t last.

 

He still did not know _how_ they would buck the King’s commands — he knew Bazine, at least, had tried with all her heart while Phasma called — but he believed now, truly believed, that it was possible. That it was _inevitable_.

 

There had been a time before the King, and there would be a time after, and Hux would be the one to usher in the dawn.

 

As he danced with a tall, dark fairy by the name of Raziya, he looked into her watchful amber eyes. She inclined her head.

 

Hux almost smiled.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Poe didn’t take them to Virginia. He took them to a tiny town on the border, less than a hundred miles — coincidentally, according to Poe — from where Ben grew up. Ben could have — should have — punished him for that. But the moment he breathed in the clear blue air still damp from an afternoon rainfall, heard the particular rustle of the tall chestnut trees lining the long dirt road, saw the clumps of Virginia bluebells growing along the low wooden fence marking the edge of the property, his throat closed, and his chest filled with a crushing emotion he couldn’t name.

 

It was like coming home, but everything was wrong; the whitewashed house tucked between the old trees was too small, too close to the road, and the shutters were white instead of blue. There was no ancient oak with a crooked swing, no duck pond where Ben first learned to swim, a derelict slave quarters where the stables should have been. A different sentence arranged from the same words.

 

They walked the three miles into town in silence, Ben lost in the familiar cheep-cheep-chireep of the chickadees, the buzzing of the honeybees, the distant echoes of familiar accents. The smell of the earth after a rain, which until now he had not realized was different in all other places he had lived, less sweet, less dark. Every step brought more memories — riding back from town with his mother, the back of their cart full of groceries and occasionally secret candy he had to eat before they got home; racing his father to the apple orchard down the road and filling their pockets, leaving coins at the base of the trees Ben only realized years later Han picked back up; the day Luke came to take him away.

 

He’d kicked and screamed at first, setting off the dogs for miles around, spooking the horses, the magic he still couldn’t quite control sending random objects and occasionally people flying, ripples running through the ground whenever his struggling brought his feet in contact with the earth. He’d gotten free, run to his parents, thrown his arms around Han’s legs and sobbed into his trousers as an unsettled tool shed crumpled. Han had grabbed him by the shoulders and pointed at the shed and said, _“This is why we don’t want you!_ ”

 

Ben hadn’t thought about that in years.

 

The town was too small to have a proper inn, but a little asking around — mostly on Poe’s part, though those few they encountered along the road or on the street seemed more inclined to deal with Ben — directed them towards the home of an elderly couple who would be willing to offer them room and board in exchange for coin, or, failing that, help maintaining the house. Ben offered the latter, apparently to the surprise of all involved; Poe, though he knew well enough that Ben hadn’t stopped to pick up any money on his way out of the tower, looked at him every bit as oddly as the stringy man and his equally thin wife looked at his fine clothes.

 

A moment of recognition had flashed across the woman’s rheumy blue eyes and she’d asked, “Are you a _magician_?” For a moment, Ben had been afraid. Then she’d burst into a smile and bounced like a schoolgirl, clapping her much shorter husband on the shoulder excitedly, saying, “Henry, Henry, they’re magicians, Henry, just like in the stories! Of _course_ you can stay! May I see some, please, I’ve never seen magic before, oh I would so very much like to see some magic—”

 

Poe had laughed and conjured a bouquet of beautiful blue flowers that fluttered into butterflies in her hands. She’d been so excited she cried.

 

The couple didn’t have two separate rooms to spare, but they did have an attic and a cot. Poe and the couple both seemed to assume the Mexican would be the one to take it, but Ben surprised them again. This attic was full of dusty trunks and sheet-covered furniture and old paintings lent up against the slant of the roof, while Uncle Luke’s had been clean and sparse, the only accoutrements those Ben bought or fashioned for himself, but the still, hazy air was the same.

 

He pushed the cot into the corner, roughly where his bed had been in Uncle Luke’s house, and lay on his back, staring up at the rafters. One of the beams at the house had a name carved into it — _Anakin_. Someone — Luke, or Great Uncle Owen before him — had tried to sand it away, but the letters were deep. Ben used to stare at that name for hours, wondering.

 

Luke and Ben’s parents didn’t talk about Vader much. Any of the old days, really. Sometimes, when Han and Uncle Lando had a few too many, they would reminisce about the days before the war, and before they sent Ben away his parents used to have hushed conversations in the middle of the night, but he’d gotten most of his stories second-hand, from the shopkeeper in town or the farmer down the road or the other children. He had an image in his mind, of a tall man in a black mask striding across a battlefield while cannons and rifles rang out around him, calling down lightning or sucking the air from men’s lungs a dozen at a time. _That_ , Ben had thought, was what a magician should be. Not some pacifist teaching children to scry and taming the weather for a handful of farmers. And now, Ben thought with a smile, he was both. Or had been. Before.

 

Someone knocked on the hatch leading up to the attic.

 

“Mister Magician?” Henry’s wife — he was sure she’d given her name, but Ben hadn’t been paying attention — called through the hatch. “Supper will be ready soon, if you like.”

 

“Thank you,” Ben called back, and stayed where he was.

 

He intended to fall asleep. He wanted to see Fox again, to slip out of this nostalgic reverie and remind himself why he was here. He was beginning to drift off when he heard the hatch open and sat up.

 

“Sophie is officially my favorite person on Earth,” Poe said through a mouthful of dinner roll, clambering up the ladder with a steaming bowl of soup floating along behind him. “She let me have _three_ helpings.”

 

Ben swung his legs over the bed, scooting over as he realized Poe was going to sit next to him whether he moved or not. “Do you ever stop eating?”

 

“Not if I can help it,” Poe replied, taking another bite of the roll and pushing the bowl into Ben’s hands. “This one’s for you.”

 

Ben looked down at the dark, meaty soup and then back up at Poe. “You brought me dinner.”

 

“She asked me to.” Poe shrugged. “What can I say, she earned a lot of good will.”

 

The bowl was ceramic, not quite china but better than Ben would have expected, painted with swirls of rough flowers Sophie may well have done herself. The spoon was plain, but silver plated; apparently magicians warranted the good cutlery. Ben picked it up and swirled the soup around, watching bits of barley and peas float to the surface.

 

“Any idea how long we’ll be here?” Poe asked, stuffing the rest of the dinner roll into his mouth. “Because I could stay for a _while_.”

 

Ben just shrugged.

 

For a time, there was silence. Someone outside called a name — ‘ _Constance, Constance_ ’, a tardy child maybe, or a wandering friend. There were bits of carrot and potato in the soup too, slivers of onion and hearty chunks of beef. It smelled good, and oddly familiar, like a recipe from his childhood he had forgotten long ago. He found himself thinking of Pio for the first time in over a decade, remembering the affected way the slave walked, the accent he put on to make himself sound more sophisticated, like an actual butler. Ben used to copy him behind his back. He found himself wondering suddenly if Pio was even still alive — he would have been eighty by now, at least, probably more, Ben wasn’t sure. And Artoo, the stableman, would be even older. _Christ_ , Ben thought, pushing a potato around, _my entire childhood could be dead._

“Are you actually going to eat that?” Poe asked. Ben, somewhat startled, glanced up and then passed the bowl back. Poe took it and shoveled a spoonful into his mouth as if he were starving to death. “I thought you were over this.”

 

Ben blinked at him. “Over what?”

 

“Not eating,” Poe said as he took another spoonful. “Guess you’re taking the whole exile thing harder than I thought.”

 

“The closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend called me a selfish little man and threw me out,” Ben deadpanned. “How am I _supposed_ to take it?”

 

“You could not care,” Poe replied through his food. “Who gives a rat’s ass what they think, you’re Kylo fucking Ren, you do what you want. Screw them and the high horse they rode in on.”

 

Poe made a stabbing gesture with his spoon and Ben found himself smiling. “Good to know you’re on my side.”

 

“Not on your side, not remotely on your side, I’d kill you right now if I could,” Poe retorted only half jokingly. “That’s kind of the point. You didn’t have to leave. You didn’t have to offer your services to Sophie and Henry. You could have just messed around in their minds, made them think we paid, made them not care, anything. But you didn’t. You chose not to.”

 

“Let me guess,” Ben drawled, leaning back against the wall behind the cot and crossing his arms over his chest. “You think that’s somehow significant.”

 

“You could be a good person, if you wanted to,” Poe said around a potato chunk. “You’re not too far gone. Not yet.”

 

Ben didn’t reply immediately. In the compound, he might have laughed. Here, he sat and thought about the one thing Luke had ever told him about Vader; that in the end, he’d died a good man.

 

“You should go home,” Poe said as his spoon began to scrape the bottom of the bowl. “It’s not like we have anything else to do. Might be a good time to figure some things out.”

 

There was more emotion in Ben’s sigh than he aimed for, more wistfulness in his voice. “They don’t want me.”

 

“Trust me,” Poe said through the last of the soup. “You might be surprised.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

When Wren came, the next few nights, he was quiet, soft, holding Hux close and breathing into his neck. The door was gone, the carrot quietly drawn back, to be dangled again when they began to misbehave. It was as if they were starving, Hux thought, and had been given a single grape, not enough to feed them but more than enough to re-ignite their hunger. Hux was sorely tempted to press his lips to Wren’s pulse, but too much healing too fast was as good as none at all, and he did not like the gleam of the other fairies’ eyes.

 

He wanted to talk to Wren, alone, in secret beyond the reach of the King’s hollow eyes. Wanted to hear all that Wren had been up to, what exactly had happened with his Knights, where he was and how he felt and if he was alright. He wanted to tell Wren about Raziya and Maz and Tekka and Connix and Tabala, about Bazine and her whispers, about Plutt’s mysterious silence, about his realization. How many more could there have been, had they been truly alone? How much had Hux missed, or forgotten? How much did Hux assume, that Wren would reveal?

 

Humans didn’t think like fairies. Fairies were masters of perfection, of art, of taking a concept and carving it down to its truest core and expressing it in its most ideal incarnation, but they could never really think of something new. They thought in straight lines, in furrows and crow-paths and never found themselves thinking, ‘ _how can I solve this problem_ ’, because the solution was almost always a word away. Humans were the true creators of the world, the true innovators, coming up with the most incredible inventions; clay pottery and woven baskets, cities, writing, spears and swords and bows, buildings and streets and governments. There had been no King among the Fay until there had been a king among the tribes of man. The idea had simply never occurred to them until they saw it for themselves.

 

The skill of a fairy and the mind of a man made for fearsome bedfellows. If they could just find a way to be alone…

 

Next time. If there was a next time.

 

There had to be a next time.

 

The eighth night after their rendezvous, Wren stayed a little longer than usual, a full eight hours and then another two on top. As he began to wake up, he clung close, holding on even as his form shimmered away like mist. Hux’s heart ached to follow. He didn’t dare try.

 

Alone now, Hux stood for a moment, waiting for the lingering warmth of Wren’s touch to dissipate before searching for a new partner. Slender black-haired Shi, perhaps, or Asuum with his narrow ruby eyes. Then he saw a figure in purple and black striding towards him with definite purpose and held back a curse.

 

Tuwanae started talking even before he’d grabbed Hux’s hand, his deep voice low and urgent. “I know you don’t like me, but I need your help.”

 

Hux resisted rolling his eyes, but just barely. He and Tuwanae hadn’t gotten along particularly well before — Hux hadn’t _disliked_ the man, just found him aggressively boring in the way those with a stringent moral code usually were — and the fairy’s association with the girl hadn’t done their relationship any favors. He’d hoped that after his last interaction with them that he would never have to deal with either of them again. Apparently he was wrong.

 

“Rey’s been captured,” Tuwanae continued. “The Russians took her prisoner and they’re keeping her in a camp somewhere in Siberia. You have to send Kylo after her. It’s only a matter of time before they execute her, and she’s already been there for _months_.”

 

Hux was already shaking his head, in dark amusement as much as anything. Tuwanae grit his teeth.

 

“ _Please_. I’d go myself, but the King won’t let me leave.” Glancing around, Tuwanae leaned in closer, dropping his voice until it was barely audible. “I’ll owe you one.”

 

Hux found himself considering. Risk versus reward.

 

If Tuwanae was in the same boat as Hux was, he had a vested interest in bringing the King down regardless of what Hux did. And if Wren left the South, that could be seen as disobedience, even putting aside for a moment the peril of sending him into the hinterland of one of the most magically ubiquitous and environmentally hostile regions of the planet. A magician would be well guarded, well warded, protected against exactly the sort of attack Wren would have to level. And without a fairy companion, the danger was multiplied ten-fold.

 

And, the tiny, petty part of Hux said, he didn’t want Rey and Wren anywhere within a hundred miles of one another, especially not now. While he trusted Wren, to an extent, he did not trust her.

 

And yet. If he denied Tuwanae, and Rey died because of it, he would have made an enemy. And Hux could not be certain Tuwanae would be willing to put aside his personal hatred in the name of a larger cause, especially one he no longer had a stake in. Fighting the King would be difficult enough without someone sinking a blade into his back.

 

In the end, he decided to hedge his bets.

 

“Wren does as he pleases,” he murmured loftily, slipping as much derision into his tone as he could. “If he choses to rescue your wayward strumpet, I’ll have little to do with it.”

 

For a moment, Tuwanae’s brows furrowed, his full lips pouting. Then the content of Hux’s words wriggled their way into his big head and he burst into a wide luminous grin, wrapping his thick arms around Hux in a crushing hug. Regretting every decision he’d ever made, Hux shoved at him, finding to his considerable horror that Tuwanae was physically stronger than him.

 

“Get off of me,” he snapped as quietly as he possibly could, struggling to pry himself free and casting worried glances up at the King who, thankfully, appeared to be engrossed in the image flickering in his silver bowl. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

 

Tuwanae released him, still grinning. Blood burned bright under Hux’s cheeks, along with the stares of the fairies around him. He caught Maz rolling her small dark eyes and Plutt with his lips pulled up in a strange, unreadable expression that might, _might_ have been approval or quite possibly disdain, the others curious or annoyed by the sudden interruption in the flow of the dance. Hux tugged his jerkin back into place.

 

“Thank you,” Tuwanae said, reaching back out to take Hux’s hand and resume their waltz.

 

Hux glared daggers, but said nothing.

 

He hoped he had not just made a mistake.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Living with Henry and Sophie and Poe was… strange. In some ways, it was like living with Rey — he was Ben again, without the weight of sins and expectations, pouring himself into simple work; fixing the roof, repairing the wear on the old furniture, whisking dust out of the house with a conjured breeze. Poe was there to remind him of who he was, but Poe was not Fox; he did not say _come back_ , but _go forward_. Leave the crow behind. You could _have this_. You could _be this_. If you wanted. You’re not too far gone.

 

At first, Ben avoided the couple as best as he could. He spent a day regrowing shingles, politely declining the oft-offered lemonade — either it would taste like he remembered or it wouldn’t, and he didn’t know which would be worse — and another holed up in the attic with every dress and shirt and pair of trousers the couple owned, leaving them new and better than new. Then, on the third day, Poe came up into the attic, grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him down to dinner, ignoring Ben’s half-hearted protests as if Ben were the one ensorceled.

 

That first dinner together was awkward. Ben’s legs were too long for the table and chairs, his knees sticking up to knock against the underside and setting the candles wobbling every time he moved, and the slender cutlery felt clumsy in his big hands. He hadn’t thought about proper dining etiquette in years. He felt like he was eating too fast, then too slow, constantly conscious of the silence and Sophie’s unrelenting smile. By the time he finished his pork roast — which was delicious and oddly familiar in the same way the soup had been — he was certain no-one present would ever want to speak to him again.

 

Poe caught him on the way up the stairs, grabbing his arm and smiling a wry kind of smile that made his eyes glitter.

 

“You made her really happy tonight,” he said with a cheerful earnestness Ben had trouble disbelieving. “You should do it again.”

 

Ben did.

 

Sophie… didn’t remind him of his mother, per se. She was more of _a_ mother, and the more comfortable she became around him the more she did motherly little things that made his chest ache — reach up to tidy his hair, straighten his lapels, ladle more food onto his plate without asking and occasionally against his protestations.

 

“You have to forgive her,” Henry said in his Norfolk accent one night as she bustled off to the kitchen with the dirty plates, Ben’s still laden with two more spoonfuls of mashed potatoes than he could not have possibly eaten. “We had a boy, you see. He’d be about your age.”

 

Henry didn’t explain what had happened to him, and Ben didn’t have the courage to ask.

 

Before he knew it, a week had passed. He was starting to run out of things to do. The carpets were all plush and pristine, the subtle water damage on the upper levels fixed and the roof repaired, the soft earth the house was slowly sinking into replaced with hard rock — a detail Henry and Sophie hadn’t asked him to attend to, likely because they didn’t know what shaky foundations their life had been built upon. All he could do now was enchant the place, weave the bones together and whisper the walls strong and ensure nothing short of magical intervention could ever bring it down. The cost of such a service could have bought the house and half the town along with it. Ben did it for cookies and a smile.

 

“Over-doing it a little, don’t you think?” Poe asked as he walked into the parlor where Ben was sitting cross-legged on the floor, reaching out to the dead wood and iron under the walls. “I think this is a literal fairytale. Two wandering magicians stay at the home of an old couple, repaying their kindness with miracles. All we need to do is leave them a chest full of gold and we’ll be legends.”

 

“We don’t have a chest of gold,” Ben mumbled, struggling to keep his concentration.

 

“Really? I could have sworn.” Poe smiled and sat on the floor nearby, his back against the now-pristine white sofa. “What is it, then? Is this about George, or your parents?”

 

The humming shape in Ben’s mind wisped away, magic dissolving into nothing like a voice lost in the wind. “Go ahead, talk all you want, it wasn’t like I was doing anything.”

 

“I’m guessing parents,” Poe said, propping his elbows on his knees. “They’re the right age, in the right area. They had a son and lost him. Must be a lot of guilt wrapped up in that head of yours.”

 

“My parents didn’t lose me,” Ben found himself barking. “They sent me away. So no, there isn’t.”

 

“You sure that’s how it was?” Poe asked, tilting his head to the side. “A kid with your kind of power, your kind of rage… Maybe they didn’t think they had a choice.”

 

“There’s always a choice.” Ben pushed himself to his feet. “They didn’t want me. They _never_ wanted me. So shut up, before you make a fool of yourself defending people who would rather have _nice things_ than a son.”

 

“You don’t have a _single_ good memory of them?” Poe asked as he rose and followed Ben out into the little entrance hallway. “Not _one_?”

 

“Buying me candy and taking me to see puppet shows doesn’t make them good parents,” Ben snapped, taking the stairs up to the second floor two at a time.

 

“I’m just saying—”

 

Ben turned at the top of the stairs, glaring down at Poe with hard eyes. “Why do you care? Do you think I’ll go home and see my _mommy_ and we’ll _hug_ and I’ll decide to give it all up, give _Fox_ up, and spend the rest of my life raising horses like some kind of…” Ben gestured violently. “ _Nothing_? It’s not going to happen. So stop talking about something you know _nothing_ about.”

 

Poe didn’t respond, leaning back on the stairs, his strange eyes flicking to the side. Ben turned again and stalked over to the little corner where the ladder to the attic was.

 

A few minutes passed, Ben lying on his bed and staring up at the rafters where _Anakin_ wasn’t. Just when he thought Poe had finally decided to leave him alone, he heard the creak of the hatch. He didn’t look over, gritting his teeth.

 

Poe padded across half of the attic, then stopped, looking down at his feet and toeing the dustless boards.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “I didn’t mean to… upset you. I was just…”

 

Ben said nothing, didn’t even look at him, and Poe sighed, flopping down to sit on the floor. He propped his elbows on his knees again and fiddled with his fingers.

 

“I didn’t know my father,” he said, looking down at his hands. “Not really. The summons stopped working before I was old enough really to remember. Changelings age slower than human children, so me and Mother had to move _constantly_ , before anyone figured out what I was. She was all I had. And when she died…”

 

He stopped. Ben tilted his head to look at him, to see the furrow in his brow and the tightness in his lips.

 

“That’s what I want, more than anything,” Poe continued, looking up to meet Ben’s gaze. “I want to be part of a family again. Getting you to make peace with yours feels like a solution. Maybe it isn’t. But take it from a guy who’s been around the block a few times; if you don’t at least try to make things right, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.”

 

Ben paused for a moment, then nodded. What that nod meant, even he wasn’t sure.

 

Poe nodded back, then stood, gesturing at Ben vaguely. “I’ll let you… get back to it. It’s… a good thing. Kind of stupid, if you don’t want to be found out, but if that’s what you want to do, then have at it.”

 

For a long while after Poe had disappeared back down the ladder, Ben lay staring at the space where he had been. Then he got down onto the floor, cross-legged, and went back to work.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Hux wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. He considered waiting until they next had a moment alone, but that could have been weeks, _months_ away. Instead, he guided Wren as subtly as he could towards the outer ring of the dance floor, as far from the King as possible, wishing vehemently that Tuwanae had thought to take such precautions. Ever since their conversation, he had felt a prickling on the back of his neck, though when he glanced up, the King’s eyes were always elsewhere.

 

He found himself second-guessing everything he was doing. Was he too alert, was he too outgoing, should he bow his head, would the other him cling to Wren or deny himself the pleasure of his touch? It didn’t matter. He _was_ alert, and he _wasn’t_ bowing his head, and he _did_ cling to Wren, as much as Wren clung to him. Consistency was more important than form. But Hux had never before had to be someone other than himself, and now he didn’t have the reference he’d had before, didn’t have six months eleven days of abject misery fresh in his mind. He was just guessing. And, increasingly, he wasn’t sure there was any point. The King had always looked right through him before; why should it be any different now?

 

The King wanted him afraid. He had to remember that.

 

“Why is he staring at us?” Wren mumbled into Hux’s ear, and Hux’s heart stopped.

 

Yet when he raised his eyes, the King’s were lowered, staring down into the bowl.

 

Then he turned his head and saw Tuwanae, shuffling the barest sketch of a dance with a bemused Shi and staring at them with furious intensity. The curses he’d been holding back finally slipped out.

 

“Son of a motherless whore,” Hux hissed, fingers digging into Wren’s flesh. “The man has the cunning of a _stump_.”

 

Wren frowned, leaning back a little to look Hux in the eye. “Why? What’s going on?”

 

Hux almost didn’t tell him, on principle alone. Tuwanae didn’t _deserve_ his help, after all this… _nonsense_. But though Tuwanae’s idiocy had ratcheted up the risk, to deny him now would not sublimate that increase, and Hux had no notion of what the man would do if denied.

 

“ _Rey_ has been _captured_ by the _Russians_ ,” he snipped, contempt dripping from every word. “He wants _your help_.”

 

“Rey’s—” Wren’s head jerked and his body tensed. “Is she alright?”

 

If Hux had been annoyed before, the concern in Wren’s voice raised his mood to cross, a bitter treat after a sour meal. When he spoke, the words came out hard and sharp.

 

“How should I know? I’m not her keeper.”

 

Wren’s sigh huffed in Hux’s ear. “ _Fox_.”

 

His tone wasn’t admonishing, or demanding; the sort of the a patient parent would use with a stubborn child. _Petty_ , Hux thought. _Petty little jealousy, and the girl doesn’t wear his finger around her neck._ He took a deep breath.

 

“She’s in a camp in Siberia,” he said, before the green flame in his chest could spark again. “You don’t _have_ to go. She’s not your responsibility. She got herself into this mess, and she can get herself out of it.”

 

Wren was quiet for a moment, his fingers playing gently on Hux’s hip. Hux could feel his mind, ticking away. Eventually, Wren turned his head to breathe into Hux’s throat.

 

“I do have to,” he murmured. “She saved my life. I owe her. And I’m running out of things to do, so I might as well.”

 

This last he said with a smile, as if this were just a game, a diversion without consequence. Hux’s hand slid around to the back of his neck, under his waves of hair, and he held Wren close, the academic worry he’d reasoned his way through coming back keen and cold, like ice in the space around his lungs.

 

“Be careful,” he whispered. “Be so, so careful.”

 

“I will,” Wren promised, pressing a soft kiss to Hux’s throat. “I have to make this right.”


	10. Siberia

**Siberia**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Standing with Poe before the mirror hung above the couple’s fireplace, Ben wondered if he hadn’t bitten off more than he could chew.

 

The first scrying spell he’d tried didn’t work, showed nothing but a faint silver shimmer on the surface of the water. He’d had to go to Poe to break through the wards, and when he did his heart sunk in his chest.

 

Rey looked unhurt, dressed in a cream waistcoat and trousers with a thin blue blanket wrapped loosely around her shoulders. She sat sideways on a narrow wooden bench, her legs drawn up against her chest as she leaned against a windowless log wall. Into the roughly hewn wood were carved glyphs, some Ben was familiar with and more he was not.

 

Poe let out a low whistle. “Anti-magic warding. Even a fairy would have trouble with that. This is going to be _fun_.”

 

There were more glyphs carved onto the stone floor, circles within circles marking off the entire room. Even the heavy iron-banded door was covered. In the hallway beyond, there were wards every couple of feet, in front of every cell, even on the ceiling. At each end of the hallway stood a pair of soldiers in crisp white uniforms, complete with bleached wool greatcoats to keep out the cold, holding ornate rifles tipped with long, textured bayonets. Around the corner was a little room filled with eleven more guards, laughing and joking in Russian as they played some kind of card game and drank from thin-necked canteens. And beyond the front door…

 

This was going to be hard.

 

“Well, it’s been nice knowing you,” Poe said, his hands in his pockets as he rocked onto his toes and back. “I’ve always wanted to go out saving a pretty girl.”

 

“We’ll be fine,” Ben groused, pushing the small hand mirror he’d borrowed from a very confused Sophie deeper into his pocket. “The plan is going to work.”

 

“Assuming they haven’t thought of it first,” Poe replied as Ben placed his hand on the mirror above the fireplace. “You know, Rey never told me exactly how the two of you got together.”

 

Ben didn’t respond, choosing to mumble the words to the spell instead. The world flew away and he felt as if he’d been blasted apart and drawn back together, every nerve in his body sparking for the fraction of a fraction of a second before he found himself standing on a translucent white path leading off into the vaguely blue distance.

 

“I asked her once,” Poe said as he lead them off down the path. “She said it was just a coincidence, but I find that hard to believe. She’s a pretty powerful magician, even without a lot of training. She’ll probably be even better than me one day. Magicians that powerful don’t just run into each other on the street.”

 

Ben grit his teeth, but he knew Poe well enough by now to know he wouldn’t give up a chance to needle him. Rounding his shoulders, he sighed.

 

“I was wounded in the war,” he said, hoping to put the issue to rest. “Fox brought me through the Kingsroads and we just happened to come out of a bucket in her kitchen. She saved my life. You told me to make things right, and I’m making things right. Alright?”

 

Poe considered him for a moment, then nodded, apparently satisfied. A cheeky gleam still lingered in his strange eyes and there was a quirk to his lips, but he didn’t press it.

 

Ben was glad. He was trying not to think about it.

 

He hadn’t really interacted with Rey since she left him, though he’d seen her a few times, especially lately, dancing with Finn. He didn’t know what he’d say, or how he’d act, how he _should_ act. She’d _left_ him, and even though he didn’t blame her for it, could almost _thank_ her, for leaving him free to pursue Fox, he still felt a lingering chill of resentment. And part of him still wanted her to think well of him.

 

Nothing in the camp was reflective. There was no window glass, no standing water; all the metal was brushed and textured until it was dull. Even the snow was pushed out beyond the walls, so it piled up on the outer side of the inscribed palisade higher than Ben was tall. And then, in the growing heat of the lengthening days, it began to melt.

 

All they needed was a trickle.

 

There were guards patrolling the walls, and their black clothing would stand out sharp against the white of the snow. They couldn’t make a run for either of the two gates, and they didn’t want to; they burrowed, deep into the snowbank, Poe drawing up a thin sheet of ice behind them to hide their entrance. The little hollow they created for themselves was far, far too small to be comfortable, Ben’s legs folded up tight against his chest and even Poe having to crouch to keep from pushing through the ceiling, and while the chill bit into them wherever they touched the surrounding freeze, within a few short minutes, the air was close and hot. Eventually Ben had to risk a hole in the sheet, just to let in some air.

 

Faster than he expected, the light outside their hollow faded, briefly tinting the ice orange like stained glass before the sun dipped below the horizon and night quickly swallowed the world. When it was fully dark, Ben, his muscles cramped and aching, pushed his hands through the shallow layer of snow and into the cold earth.

 

He’d never tried anything this big before. Moving a hill or rippling some mud was one thing, like playing with sand. Ben wanted to move the beach. Just holding all that territory in his mind was daunting.

 

_Concentrate,_ he thought, and took a breath.

 

The camp was well-placed. The bedrock here was thick and solid, without fault. He could feel it, content and sleepy, whiling away the millenia under the permafrost like a sleeper under a thick blanket. Little by little, Ben woke it up.

 

He told it stories. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755, before his time but still fresh in the minds of the old women who hired him to tidy their homes. The four that wracked the Mississippi Valley, reversing the river and forming a lake that had not been. The eruption in the Dutch East Indies that filled the sky with so much smoke summer never came. He made the destruction sound _glorious_ , spoke of _power_ and _strength_ and _awe_. The men who carved away stone to build houses brought low, the living earth avenged. He told it the story of the hill he’d freed, the joy it had felt as it ran across the landscape, how it ran still, beholden to nothing and no-one. He made stillness sound like stagnation, solidity like chains.

 

“ _Move_ ,” he whispered, his fingers going numb. “ _Stretch your legs. Be free._ ”

 

He felt a strange sensation, as if somewhere far away, someone was laughing.

 

Then the earth began to shake.

 

The bedrock here was thick and solid, and the soil was shallow and hard. The timbers of the palisade, of all the buildings within it, only went a foot deep, if they were sunk in at all. The ground bucked, trembled like the stomach of a lover, and the palisade bowed and bent and broke, whole sections cascading to the ground in waves. The wards keeping the outer camp free of magic shattered.

 

Snow tumbled down around them and only a flare of hot air from Poe’s hands kept them from being buried alive, melting their way free of the drift even as it collapsed on top of them. The logs directly in front of them remained vertical, but that was no problem; Poe flit up like a dragonfly, flicking out gusts of wind to topple the startled guards from their perches while Ben ran up a thin ribbon of earth spiraling up like a wind chime.

 

The camp below was in chaos. Half the buildings had collapsed and guards were rushing this way and that, some searching and others digging their fellows from the rubble and some just aimless. Ben and Poe dropped down amongst them and ran towards the still-standing prison complex where Rey was hidden. There were shouts and cries, but a swirling vortex flecked with snow surrounded them like a shield, blowing bullets off-course.

 

“It’s working!” Poe laughed, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

 

Ben looked at him and grinned, just in time to see the cannonball.

 

Shoving Poe down, he ducked, the heavy iron ball roaring straight through the wind wall and passing over his head to slam into a nearby building, the thick logs cracking but not crumpling. A tall bald woman covered in black tattoos had emerged from one of the other standing structures, twelve pound balls spinning around her like planets. Like skipping a stone over water, she flicked another one towards them and almost took off Poe’s leg as he struggled to his feet. Ben grabbed him and hurried him towards the damaged log wall, calling for the wood to open like lips and swallow them down. They’d barely managed to scramble in through the low opening when a third cannonball splintered the logs behind them.

 

“Hold it for as long as you can,” Ben told Poe. The other man nodded, his strange eyes wide and gleaming.

 

The building they were in was surprisingly large, a broad, low room filled with wood and metal shelves, witch-lights glowing every couple feet in place of candles. Upon the shelves, secured by glyph-engraved chains, were books. There must have been a thousand, almost all of them ancient, with cracked leather spines and leather pages. There was one thick door, padded to keep the cold and the damp out. Ben dragged one of the shelves against it, just as someone tried to open it. He heard what he assumed were Russian curses, and then shoulders brought to bear. A moment’s concentration and he sunk the feet of the shelves into the stone floor, rooting it in place. No-one was going to be getting in that way.

 

They also couldn’t get out.

 

Not that it was an option. In a matter of seconds, the building would be surrounded. They would have to go another way.

 

The question was, up or down?

 

The floor was stone tiles laid over leveled permafrost. He could get through that easy enough. He’d never tried to tunnel through earth before, but he couldn’t imagine it would be much different from snow. He found a bare patch amongst the shelves and knelt, reaching out to the still giddy earth.

 

The ground shook again, a shivering aftershock, and books tumbled off the shelves, chains clanging as they swung. One broke free and slid across the floor to land directly between Ben’s hands.

 

It was a copy of the same grimoire Ben had picked up in the Tsar’s library. The coincidence made Ben pause, and then wonder — what was it doing _here_?

 

He picked it up. It was much-used, with a dozen dog-eared pages and a Russian name scrawled across the top of the first page in a childish hand. Flipping through it, he found the margins and in some places the spaces between the lines filled with notes in Russian and shoddy Greek, along with tiny drawings of signs and symbols, animals and angels and stars. He couldn’t make out most of it, some water-damaged or smeared, others just illegible. Then he came to a page which had been left largely blank by the original copier, apparently because of a crease in the paper. Whoever the original owner had been had capitalized on this space, writing large enough that Ben could actually make out the words. Halfway down the page was a boxed-off section, with a larger title above; _Gia na milísete me ti Gi_. _To speak to the Earth_.

 

“Ren!” Poe shouted in a lilting voice. “She’s breaking through!”

 

Ben ripped the page out and shoved it into his empty pocket, then cast the book aside.

 

“ _Part for me,_ ” he told the ground, picturing a tunnel in his mind, from this building up under Rey’s cell. “ _Give me a way_.”

 

Again he felt the laughter, and again the ground shook. For a moment he wasn’t sure anything was happening. Then the flagstones crumpled in front of him and he had to scramble backwards from an opening fissure diving deep underground.

 

“Poe!” he called as the tunnel snaked onward away from him. “Come on!”

 

As Poe scrambled away from the cracking log wall, it exploded inward, shards of wood flying in every direction under a whirling barrage of cannonballs. Ben threw out a hand and the shelves began to topple, Poe just barely ducking under one before it collapsed into a blockade of wood and metal and paper. He didn’t even slow as he approached the hole, just fell into a skid and rode the slope down into the dark. Ben followed after him, pausing for a moment to replace the flagstones and grow them together into a thick, heavy wall.

 

He needn’t have bothered. As he half-crawled down the tunnel, it closed behind him without his intervention, sealing them in. Whether that was good or not, Ben didn’t know, but he was thankful when he heard the cracking thunder of the cannonballs against the stone.

 

The distance between the library and the prison hadn’t seemed that far above ground, a few hundred level feet. Underground, cramped and claustrophobic and in the dark, it felt like miles. There wasn’t enough room to push past each other, so Poe went ahead, pausing occasionally to let the tunnel open up in front of them. The air got close fast, stale in Ben’s lungs as the two of them huffed. It occurred to him with a sick sense of irony that they could suffocate down here, die in the grasp of the magic meant to save their lives.

 

Finally, the tunnel began to slant up again. They had to crawl on their hands and knees, Poe clawing and kicking holds into the hard earth and sending cold stones of frozen dirt raining down on Ben’s face. Then Poe stopped.

 

“What is it?” Ben asked breathlessly, rolling his shoulders that ached from so long hunched over.

 

“Floor,” Poe breathed back. “It’s warded. Magic can’t get through.”

 

Ben froze.

 

He hadn’t thought of that.

 

“What do we do?” Poe asked. Ben could hear him gulping. “Try to go around?”

 

If they went up above ground the guards would find them and shoot them as they crawled out of the hole, and Ben didn’t know if the air would last that long besides. He took a few deep breaths that felt shallow, trying to remember, trying to figure out…

 

There was a _ting_ ing sound from above them. Then another. Something cracked, and then the stone opened, glorious warm light blooming above them. Ben raised his hand to shield his eyes as Poe clambered out.

 

“I figured it would be you,” Ben heard Rey’s voice say. His heart jumped — it had been a long time. “No one else could ever be so utterly idiotic.”

 

“Sure they could,” Poe said with a little laugh, brushing the dirt from the front of his coat and gesturing down into the hole. “Look, I brought a friend.”

 

Rey looked at him, but said nothing, a silence more awkward than any Ben had ever known falling like lead as he clambered onto his feet. The cell was small, and made smaller by the gaping hole in the floor, and Ben realized he was much closer to Rey than he’d ever wanted to be again, close enough for their knuckles to brush. At the touch of his skin, she pulled her hand up against her chest.

 

“Ben,” she said coolly. “What are you doing here?”

 

Ben shifted on his feet, trying to stand closer to Poe, though that was almost as strange. “Uh… Saving you.”

 

Rey glanced from one of them to another, a steady stare that did not look like the face of a grateful damsel. Finally she landed on Poe.

 

“You’ve got wood in you.”

 

“What?” Poe asked, then craned his neck as she gestured to his shoulder. Bristles of shattered log stuck out of his coat like a porcupine’s back. “Oh, yeah. There were cannonballs. It’s a long story. It’s fine.”

 

“Turn around,” Rey told him.

 

Poe obeyed without question and she flipped the short blunt-tipped knife she’d been holding in her hand around and began to pluck splinters from Poe’s back. He winced occasionally as one came out tipped in red, but didn’t complain.

 

“Finn sent you,” Rey said in a flat, calm voice. “Didn’t he.”

 

Ben nodded, swallowing. Something felt very wrong.

 

Rey sighed and rolled her eyes. “I told him not to get you involved. Not that I don’t appreciate the effort,” she amended quickly, patting Poe on the shoulder. “It’s just that you’ve rather mucked up my plans.”

 

Ben stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

 

She looked up at him again, her eyes narrowed into a steely glare. “Well, _someone_ has to convince poor Alexander that Britain isn’t secretly trying to start the Russian version of the French Revolution, and _you_ seemed otherwise occupied, so I thought I might as well. It was going rather well, until you showed up.”

 

“You—” Ben began, stopped, began again. “ _What are you talking about?”_

“I’ve been having tea with the Tsar,” Rey said, overly patient as she yanked a particularly big piece from Poe’s back. “He’s a lovely man when he’s not yammering on about people trying to kill him. You scared the dickens out of him when you snuck into the Winter Palace, I can’t even imagine how upset he’ll be about this. He’d best not be dead, for your sake.”

 

She leveled her blade at Ben threateningly, pinning him with another hard glare.

 

“You… You’re…” Ben flung his arms in the air. “You’re supposed to be kidnapped! Are you telling me you’re here _on purpose_?!”

 

Rey’s glare turned to diamond and she tapped the knife mid-air. “I’ll thank you not to speak to me with that kind of tone.”

 

“What are you doing?!” Ben’s hands came up as if to grasp her head between them. “You can’t _talk your way out of a war!_ ”

 

“I can, and I was, before you showed up.” Rey waggled her knife at him again, then went back to plucking out splinters. “Thank you for the effort, but I really don’t need your help.”

 

“You’re crazy,” Ben said. “We’re going. _Now_.”

 

As he reached out to grab her arm, Rey flicked her wrist at him. A wave of force hit him in the chest and knocked him backwards, sending him toppling back into the hole. The closed earth had worked its way up to half-way up the incline and stopped his fall, bits of dust rising around him as he coughed.

 

From up above, he heard Poe’s voice say, “Have I ever told you how much I love you?”

 

Rey scoffed and gave him a gentle smack.

 

Ben didn’t get up, half laying with his legs drawn up awkwardly against his chest by the tug of gravity. The frustration and disappointment that had been building since Rey hadn’t flung herself into his arms swelled into a heavy weight, crushing his chest and settling in his stomach like stone. There was a pressure behind his eyes, though whether it was anger or tears he didn’t know.

 

He should have expected this. This was what _always_ happened. He tried to save someone and they shot him in the chest. He tried to help people and they shoved him under the water. Nothing ever went the way it was supposed to and he didn’t know why he’d ever bothered to try. It was just _useless. Pointless._ He was never going to be anything other than what he was. He wasn’t _good_ enough.

 

After a little while, Poe’s head poked over the edge of the hole. “Ben? You alright?”

 

_Anger,_ Ben decided.

 

A gesture and Poe staggered forward, tumbling down the slope with a startled curse in a language Ben didn’t recognize. Ben grabbed him as he fell, flipping them both so Poe’s back slammed up against the closed wall of earth, Ben on top of him with his hands wrapped around Poe’s throat.

 

“ _Liar_ ,” Ben hissed, squeezing tight as Poe’s short nails clawed at his hands. “You just wanted me to get caught, didn’t you? You’re trying to get me killed so you can be free. Well, _fuck you_. _Fuck you_ and _fuck redemption_.”

 

“Ben!” Rey barked as she slid down the slope to land next to him. “What are you—”

 

He called the blade out of her hand and into his, the dull pock-marked metal smoothing and shining and sharpening to a wicked edge. Using one hand to force Poe’s chin up, he pressed the knife to Poe’s bobbing throat. Poe’s eyes went wide and strange, flaring like brass in firelight.

 

Ben couldn’t press down.

 

There was nothing stopping him. Poe wasn’t fighting back. There was just his eyes, and Rey’s, staring at him. Neither of them had ever seen him kill.

 

Cautiously, carefully, Rey reached out and put her hand on Ben’s shoulder. She swallowed and squeezed gently.

 

“Thank you for coming to save me,” she said quietly, her other hand reaching across to wait palm-up. “Give me the knife.”

 

Ben’s hand trembled for a moment, then pulled away from Poe’s neck. The knife left a thin line of beading blood and Poe sucked in a deep, shaky breath.

 

Putting the knife in Rey’s hand, Ben stood and turned and climbed back up the slope, feeling stupid, feeling _weak_ , a wolf without teeth too wild to be wanted. Too dangerous to be loved, too soft to be useful, some pathetic neutered _thing_ that had no place, that belonged nowhere, that had no destiny but to starve in some alley, still snarling at whoever was kind and foolish enough to bring it food. He sat on the narrow bench and hung his head in his hands.

 

Rey came back up first, pausing at the top to help Poe back up, though her eyes remained on Ben as if he were an animal. He almost wanted to laugh. All this time, all this distance, all that had happened, and they were in the same old place. He supposed it was only right. He didn’t deserve to be trusted.

 

“You alright?” Poe asked, approaching him gingerly and dropping into a crouch beside him.

 

“You’re the one bleeding,” Ben deadpanned, pushing his hands into his hair and letting his eyes fall closed. “Let’s just go.”

 

“Yeah,” Poe said softly. “Do you have the mirror?”

 

Ben took a deep breath, then reached down into his pocket.

 

It was empty.

 

He checked the other one. The page he’d ripped from the book was there, but no mirror. Checking the first again yielded the same results. He looked around, hoping to see it on the floor or in the hole, but no, it was gone, lost somewhere in the mad scramble.

 

“Here,” Rey said, holding out the knife. “Use this.”

 

Poe stood up, reached out, touched her shoulder. “Sorry. About all of this.”

 

“It’s Finn’s fault,” she said with a sigh. “Not yours. I’ll be fine.”

 

Ben rose without looking at her, without looking at either of them. He grabbed Poe’s wrist with one hand and pressed his fingertips to the blade with the other. He didn’t say the words.

 

“Come with me,” he found himself saying instead. “Please.”

 

Rey slowly shook her head. “You could stay. Tell Alexander what you did.”

 

“I can’t. I have to save Fox.”

 

“And I have to save everyone else.” She offered him a sad-eyed smile. “Someone has to clean up your mess.”

 

Ben wanted to say something else. Last time they’d ended on ‘Good luck’. This time that felt cheap, dishonest. And this time he knew he’d see her again before long, dancing with her fairy in the King’s court.

 

So he said nothing. Just nodded, and spoke the words, and left.


	11. Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry.

**Consequences**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

 

Hux had never been so worried in all the many centuries of his life.

 

Any moment, he expected the flicker of Wren’s life to go out, the finger around his neck to disappear, the world to come crashing down around him with the terrible realization that he had sent Wren to his death. It didn’t come, and the longer it didn’t come the more intense the worry became, until the hand resting on Asuum’s bony shoulder was curled into a fist, his nails digging deep into his palms.

 

He never should have done this. He should have told Tuwanae no from the beginning, should have denied him outright instead of leaving the decision to Wren. Of _course_ Wren would go, Wren who had loved her, Wren who wanted to free the world from hunger and thirst and disease, Wren who offered his enemies every chance he could spare. _Wren the Merciful_ , he thought bitterly, wishing he had broken that noble streak from the beginning. If Wren died because of the whore he was going to rain such fury down upon her as no mortal had ever known.

 

Finally, _finally_ , he felt Wren come, his breath whooshing from his body in a heavy sigh of relief. He let Asuum go and whirled, resisting running to Wren only with great effort. He looked exhausted, his broad shoulders slumped and his eyes sad, and nothing was going to stop Hux from wrapping his arms around him this time. The facade was already crumbling, he might as well.

 

Just as he was reaching out to draw Wren into his embrace, he heard the King’s rumbling voice.

 

“Kylo Ren,” the King said, stopping both of them — and the rest of the Court — in their tracks. “Hux. Come.”

 

_No_ , Hux thought. _No_.

 

He wasn’t ready. He didn’t have a plan. He had the sketch of a plan — _defy_ , somehow, and bring the King down — but no details, no solidity, just a notion without substance.

 

But, he realized as Wren took his hand, he didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t going to let the King hurt his little bird. He had promised.

 

He could do this, he told himself as they forced themselves step by step towards the pyramid and up. That was why the King had said what he said, why the King had taken pains to break him. The King knew how strong he was. The King was _afraid_ of him, even, afraid of what he could do.

 

And he wasn’t alone. He had Bazine, and Maz and Tekka and Connix and the rest, more than even he knew. They would rise with him, if he could only show them how.

 

_He could do this_. He had to.

 

When they reached the top of the pyramid, Hux began to kneel, pulling Wren down with him, but the King gestured for them to stop, to rise again, to stand. Hux’s heart skittered in his chest. He felt breathless, dizzy, had to force himself calm. _Doubt is the King’s trap_ , he repeated in his head. _I can do this_. Wren squeezed his hand.

 

“Kylo Ren,” the King said again. “My instrument. I am… disappointed.”

 

Wren’s head bowed and he swallowed, his face white as a sheet, but for a pale, embarrassed flush to his cheeks.

 

“I gave you a command,” the King continued, nails tapping. “You disobeyed.”

 

_You told him to go to the South, not to stay,_ Hux almost said. He didn’t. Technicalities were for bargainers, and it did no good to play his hand too soon.

 

The King sat back in his throne. “Explain.”

 

Wren swallowed again and glanced at Hux. He didn’t seem to know what to say, his mouth opening and nothing coming out. Hux rubbed his thumb over Wren’s knuckle. Nothing Wren said or did could change this now, and none of it would matter, in a moment.

 

“I—” Wren began, then bowed his head and started over. “There was something I thought I had to do. I was wrong.”

 

The King said nothing, his fingers rolling one at a time, _tap, tap, tap, tap._

 

“You were right,” Wren said. “My fear is weakness. I let it guide me. That was a mistake.”

 

The King said nothing. Hux’s mouth was dry, his throat thick. A plan formed in his mind, simple and clean; _defy_ , and while the King was thrown off guard, summon a blade and slide it between his vertebrae. One motion, and the empire would come crumbling down. _I can do this_.

 

“I—” Wren faltered again. The King’s silence, the King’s gaze, were unyielding. Wren shifted on his feet, looking up. “I don’t know how to be strong. I want to be. I want to be free of this… _pain_. I hate it. I hate feeling like I’m not enough.”

 

Wren’s voice almost broke then, and Hux squeezed his hand tight. When this was over, Hux was going to kiss every inch of him, hold him down and make him forget all of this, tell him over and over that he was perfect, that he wasn’t just enough, he was _everything_ , the sun and the moon and the stars and the ground under Hux’s feet. The reason why Hux was going to kill a god. When this was over.

 

“I see,” the King said slowly. “Kneel.”

 

Wren glanced at Hux again and they sunk together. The moment was coming, Hux could feel it, thrumming on the back of his neck.

 

“You have been domesticated,” the King said. “Taught to despise your own nature. There is only one way to make you wild again. Do you wish to take it?”

 

Hux’s free hand curled into a fist.

 

“Yes,” Wren breathed.

 

The King raised his hand.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

It happened so fast Ben didn’t understand what was happening until after. A thin black shard appeared in the air and the King flicked it out as if he were tossing a card. It disappeared into Fox’s throat and Fox rocked back, his eyes going wide and his lips falling open. Then he crumpled like a discarded doll, slumping onto Ben’s shoulder, his hand limp and still in Ben’s.

 

_Fairies can’t die_ , Ben thought. _Fairies_ can’t die.

 

“Fox?” he said, his voice small. He squeezed Fox’s hand, shrugged his shoulder to get him to sit up, but he just slipped forward, Ben barely catching him before he hit the floor. He felt wrong, strange, heavy and utterly motionless, like a corpse. But fairies _couldn’t die_. His eyes were still open, his pupils blown wide, the shimmering blue opal of his eyes reduced to a thin ring. “ _Fox!_ ”

 

He wasn’t breathing, Ben realized, his own breath catching in his throat. His fingers fumbled at Fox’s neck, searching for a pulse, feeling the stiffness of the shard under his skin. No heartbeat, there was no heartbeat, and he was going cool, so quickly, no heartbeat and Ben shook him, shook him and shouted his name. Fox didn’t move.

 

“You are spoiled,” the King said in the distance. “Sentimental.”

 

“What did you do?” Ben shouted up at him, fear turning to fury and fury to fear. “Bring him back!”

 

“No,” the King intoned. “I granted you mercy once, and this is how you repay me. You have been coddled too long.”

 

“Bring him back!” Ben shouted again, slamming his hand down on the black marble beneath them.

 

Vicious claws of stone sprouted from the sides of the throne, reaching around to grab the King and pierce him, crush him, tear him apart. The King waved a hand and they crumbled to vanishing dust. Ben let Fox slide from his grasp and stood, clenching a fist and raising it up, walls of rock rising around the King to encase him, bury him. Again the King waved and the stone disintegrated. He was _smiling_ , the son of a bitch, the corners of his mouth quirked up and his black eyes glittering. Ben didn’t even gesture, just tore the pyramid open with the sheer force of his will, opening an endless black pit down into the center of the world.

 

The throne, and the creature sitting in it, remained where they were, hanging in mid air.

 

_Fairies can’t die_ , Ben thought.

 

The fight went out of him in a rush. He dropped, grabbing Fox and pulling him into his lap. He was cold now, felt like little more than meat in Ben’s arms, but his eyes were the same, clear and wide. Ben pawed at his throat, with magic and his fingers, but the shard wouldn’t come. It was a dead thing, an empty thing, with no flicker of a soul to call to. Drops of water fell to mingle with the streaks of gleaming golden red Ben’s fingers left and he realized he was crying.

 

“He makes you weak,” the King said as the pit closed. “A dog must be starved before it will kill.”

 

Ben barely heard him. This couldn’t be happening. This had to be some kind of nightmare, he was, he was dreaming again, somehow, this whole last year was one long dream and he was going to wake up and light a candle and Fox would come to him and everything would be better. Everything would be fine. Fox wouldn’t be cold in his arms. _Fairies can’t die._

The King said his name. The second time it came wrapped with magic that made him look up, into those black eyes. He glared with all the hate he could muster. Those eyes took it all in and were unchanged, like pennies tossed into an empty well.

 

“He will be returned to you,” the King rumbled, “when you have passed a test.”

 

_I’ll never do anything for you_ , he thought bitterly. What came out of his mouth was, “Name it.”

 

“Find the woman Leia Organa,” the King said. “Gain her trust. And kill her.”


	12. Home

**Home**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

…

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Ben didn’t tell Poe where they were going. He just woke him up before dawn, handed him a bag full of food taken from the kitchen, and walked away. Poe didn’t question it until they’d passed through the town and onto the northward road. Ben didn’t answer him.

 

Every step was a struggle. The previous night clung to him like a bad smell. The King had, with a graciousness that suggested he was doing them a favor, remade the room where they’d spent their night and allowed Ben to lay Fox down on the mockery of their bed. Ben lay next to him for hours, staring into his open eyes. They changed, in increments; the pupils shrunk down again, flared when Ben edged in close or ran his hand through Fox’s sweep of copper hair. Fox was there. He just couldn’t move, or breathe, or blink.

 

Ben felt like nothing for letting him stay like that. He could have been home in a minute, stepped through a mirror and slit his mother’s throat and been done with it. But he was weak. He was weak and he was useless, so he walked the hundred miles and spent every second hating himself for it, hating himself in every way that there was.

 

At the end of the first day, as they set down to sleep in a sparse stand of trees, Poe guessed.

 

“You’re going home, aren’t you?” he asked, munching on a slice of cheese.

 

Ben didn’t respond, sitting against a tree with his elbows on his knees. His stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten since they left. Poe swallowed.

 

“Whatever he wants you to do,” he said in a dour voice, “don’t. It’ll only make things worse.”

 

When he slipped back into the Court, he kept his head down, circling around towards the long hallway and the room at the end of it. Just as he was about to turn the corner, someone stepped — stumbled — out in front of him. His hands curled into fists immediately.

 

Finn drew himself up, full mouth drawn in a tight line and his arms stuck to his sides. He visibly gulped, but didn’t say anything, and Rey shoved him again, looking at him with hard, expectant eyes.

 

“I, uh…” Finn said, shifting on his feet as if he would rather be anywhere else. “I’m sorry I got you involved. It’s my fault—”

 

Ben hit him. The first punch was like slamming his fist into solid stone. Finn’s shoulders slumped, and when the second blow fell, Ben felt soft flesh smash, the cartilage of Finn’s broad nose breaking as Ben hit him again and again and again, Finn falling and Ben on top of him, blood on his knuckles, burgundy and golden red both. He expected Rey to stop him, but she didn’t. Not until his fist paused on its own, her hand coming out to gently touch the back of his, push it down until it fell limp at his side. Finn spit blood onto the black marble and began to heal. By the time Ben staggered to his feet, his face was perfect again, but for the mess of red.

 

Ben’s hand stayed broken.

 

The next day, Poe caught him cradling his hand against his chest as he sat watching Poe eat. Stuffing the remaining hunk of bread into his mouth, Poe came across their little campsite and held out his hand.

 

“Come on then,” he mumbled through the bread. “Let me see.”

 

Ben showed him. The damage wasn’t one to one — the skin of his knuckles wasn’t broken and his bones were whole, but the flesh swelled in sympathy and the muscles cramped and ached with remembered distortion. Poe knelt in front of him and began to knead his hand, smoothing the pain away with fingers gone unnaturally cold.

 

“I’d hate to see the other guy,” Poe murmured as he worked the knotted muscle. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”

 

Ben didn’t reply.

 

As they walked, Poe touched him occasionally, fingers lighting on the back of his arm as if he was worried Ben might topple over. He still hadn’t eaten, and he felt the full effects, a lightness in his head and an uneasiness to his limbs. Not long after midday, he missed a shallow dip in the road and tripped, barely managing to catch himself, once as he fell forward and again as the rush of his stuttering heart filled his head with fuzz.

 

Poe wrapped his arm around Ben’s shoulder and steered him over to the side of the road, murmuring, “Alright, that’s enough. Time for lunch.”

 

Ben didn’t want to eat. Fox couldn’t blink, how could he sit in the cool shade of an old oak and choke down fruit? This could have been over by now, but no, here he was, dooming the only person who ever really loved him to a living hell because he couldn’t gather the courage to face a woman he’d left behind almost twenty years ago. _Weak_ , he thought as he bit down on the apricot Poe thrust into his hands. _Weak and stupid and useless._

 The second night the fairies cleared a path around him eight feet wide. He ignored them all and lay down next to Fox. The side of his face was beginning to bruise, blood dripping down through still veins to pool in his cheek, so Ben turned him over, trying not to think about meat in a pan. At least he didn’t seem to be rotting. Ben wrapped his arm around Fox’s waist and pulled him against his chest and tried to imagine they were just lying together, on some clear, quiet morning, his Knights bustling around down the hall working towards a goal Ben could barely remember. Phasma was right. He had only been playing.

 

The third morning, Poe made him eat another apricot and some cheese, standing over him with his arms crossed over his chest until Ben had swallowed it all down. As he ate, Ben thought about Poddleton, about Sophie, wondered what it was people kept seeing in him. Whatever it was, he wanted to cut it out. He was tired of disappointing people.

 

As they went, the land around them became intimately familiar. They crossed a river Ben remembered swimming in, with a new bridge over the ford, and a tree Ben remembered climbing and subsequently falling out of when he discovered a beehive growing in its crook. Fences Ben had trailed a stick across, fields Ben had run through, houses he and his mother had visited in the spirit of being neighborly, though neither of them enjoyed the trips. This one they passed had been inhabited by a war widow and her three children, this other a family who could trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower. They’d had blue dishes, he remembered, with tiny white flowers.

 

His pace slowed. He stopped, occasionally, to examine a line of lilacs someone had planted along the edge of their property, or to stand under a tree that had been a sapling last he came. He didn’t argue when Poe sat down for a mid-day meal, and he dragged it out as long as possible, plucking little crumbs from a hunk of bread and eating them one at a time.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said to Fox that night, brushing the hair back from his face with trembling fingers. “I’m so sorry. I—”

 

His voice broke and tears welled in his eyes. He held Fox tight against him and sobbed into the coolness of his shoulder.

 

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Poe’s face. His head was in the other man’s lap, Poe’s hand running over his hair.

 

“Hi,” Poe said quietly. “You were crying in your sleep. Again.”

 

The drying tears prickled on his cheeks as he sat up. Poe touched his shoulder, running his hand down Ben’s arm to curl his fingers softly around Ben’s wrist.

 

“If you want to talk about it—”

 

“I don’t,” Ben said, the first waking words he’d spoken in days.

 

That afternoon, they followed a bend in the road, and suddenly it wasn’t just _the_ road. It was Ben’s road. And the trees lining it were Ben’s trees, and the field beyond was Ben’s field, and the house on the shallow hill was Ben’s house. And there was the tree with the crooked swing, and the duck pond, and the stables, and the blue shutters, flaking now, revealing the grey wood underneath. The swing hung from one rope, and the pond was choked with weeds.

 

They didn’t live here anymore, Ben realized with a dull throb. His mother, though she claimed the contrary, had always been preoccupied with appearances.

 

Still. He had no other leads to go on. Maybe the people living here now — if there were people — knew where they’d gone.

 

The gravel path leading up to the house made the same satisfying crunch underfoot. The little flower garden Pio planted was still oddly in repair, weeded and trimmed, daisies and foxglove and peonies blooming amongst the poorly maintained grass. The shed he’d destroyed the day Luke took him away was gone, a patch of dirt dusted with grass all that remained.

 

The stairs leading up to the porch creaked and dipped under his feet. The front windows were open, but the curtains drawn. They looked the same, blue gingham that didn’t sit quite right, each panel tilted in its own unique way. He remembered his mother making them, the string of curses that had spilled out of her mouth each time she stuck her finger with the needle.

 

When he knocked, two different voices called out from deep within the house, shouting words to each other Ben couldn’t catch. His hand came up to grip his shoulder. Poe, standing beside him, ran his hand down Ben’s back.

 

The door opened.

 

Behind it was his mother.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

…

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Her eyes swept up from his chest to his eyes and stopped, widening. There were deep crinkles around them that hadn’t been there before, and her hair was graying, bound up behind her head in a single loose coil. She looked so much smaller than he remembered, a tiny, frail thing more Rey’s size than his. He could have swept her up in his arms with ease, and that felt wrong in a deep-seated way that churned in his stomach like bad food.

 

Lips parting, she looked him up and down, as if she couldn’t quite believe he was there. Ben’s hand dug into his sleeve, and he was aware for the first time in a long while of the gap where his little finger should have been. He shifted his hand, curled it, as if he could hide what he’d done after all this time.

 

She seemed to be about to say something, until her flickering gaze found Poe. Her expression softened, and she slipped out the door, holding her arms out — to wrap them around _Poe_ , Ben standing stiff beside them and staring into the relative darkness of the hall beyond. His knuckles ached.

 

“Thank you,” his mother murmured to Poe, kissing him on the cheek as she drew back. He smiled at her.

 

“Wasn’t me, Mrs. O. He came all by himself.”

 

Pieces snapped into place and suddenly Ben understood. Anger flared in his chest and if his mother hadn’t been standing in the way he might have broken Poe’s jaw.

 

His mother looked back at him, giving him another once-over. She didn’t embrace him, but stepped back into the doorway, holding it open as she glanced from one man to the other.

 

“Well,” she said. “You’d better come in.”

 

The house had changed in a million different ways and none. It was in worse repair, on the inside as well as the out, the floors worn smooth and grey and the paint on the walls cracked in places. Leia lead them to the kitchen, where the same old over-wrought wooden chairs sat around the same plain table, with a porcelain vase full of daisies sitting in the center. Pio was chopping vegetables at a counter that should have been higher and looked up as they entered, dark golden skin gleaming with the heat of a pot boiling over the fireplace.

 

“Oh!” he exclaimed, turning in the same shuffling stiff-waisted way he always had. “Oh my! Master Benjamin, is that you? It is I, Ceecee Pio! You probably don’t recognize me because of the arm.”

 

Ben hadn’t even noticed, but as Pio raised his left arm he realized the stiffly curled hand was wood instead of flesh. The joint between prosthetic and flesh was hidden by the sleeve of his cotton shirt, but by the way he moved Ben guessed it went most of the way to his shoulder. That explained a number of things, and Ben found himself swallowing thickly.

 

Leia patted Pio on the back and gently pushed him towards the dining room door. “Why don’t you go tidy upstairs for a while? My son and I need to have a talk.”

 

“But your supper!” Pio protested even as he teetered off.

 

When he was gone, Leia turned and looked at them again, her eyes lingering on Ben’s until he looked away. With a sigh, she lowered herself into one of the three chairs and gestured for them to sit. By instinct, Ben reached for the middle chair, where he’d sat as a child, always edged a little closer to her than to Han. Then he stepped back and took his father’s seat, across from her, and let Poe be the buffer. Her lips pursed, but she didn’t comment, a thing that very well could have been a first.

 

For a long while they sat in silence. Then Ben cleared his throat.

 

“Where’s—” His voice still stuck and he cleared his throat again. “Where’s Han?”

 

“You mean your father?” Leia said coolly. She waited until Ben nodded before continuing. “I’m not sure. Delaware, last I heard, but that was months ago. Could be anywhere by now.”

 

That, too, explained a number of things. Ben wasn’t surprised, really — his parents had argued daily, over everything — but it still hurt in an odd kind of way. And along with the hurt was a rush of relief that he wouldn’t have to deal with both of them at once.

 

“And the others?” he asked.

 

“Chewie went with him,” she replied, sitting back in her chair. “Artoo’s around here somewhere. He hasn’t been the same since Luke left.”

 

Ben blinked. “Uncle Luke left?”

 

“You didn’t know?” she asked. Ben shook his head and she sighed. “After you… He disbanded the school and went off on some kind of… vision quest.” She gestured. “I don’t know. He said he was going to look for a way to _unmake_ fairies, whatever that means. We haven’t heard from him since.”

 

A deep chill settled in Ben’s stomach. He shifted in his seat, slumping down and crossing his arms tight and high over his chest. Poe looked at him, then turned to Leia.

 

“Hey, is Beebee around?” he asked softly. “I could go—”

 

“No,” she cut in, reaching out and grasping Poe’s hand. “No, sweetheart, you can stay. Keeps me civil.”

 

Poe glanced at Ben again, waiting until Ben nodded to sit back in his chair. As awkward as this was, Ben preferred it to the scolding he’d get the moment they were alone. He didn’t want to get angry, though maybe he should have.

 

An awkward silence fell. Ben didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought about this much, and when he had it always began with either a hug or a smack. Having neither was disorienting, and it dripped bitter poison into his gut; it was one thing to _assume_ they didn’t care, and another to see it, feel it, for himself.

 

“So,” Leia said after a long while. “You’ve been busy. I hear you fought in a war. How’d you like it?”

 

For some reason, the idea that his mother might know what he’d been up to had never occurred to him, not even after he realized she knew Poe. It was as if there were two separate worlds, Virginia and everywhere else, and the thought of knowledge crossing between them felt almost blasphemous. But, he supposed, it was better than having to explain it.

 

“It was fine,” he mumbled, staring at the light filtering in through the gingham curtains. “It didn’t end well.”

 

“I heard about that, too,” she said, leaning back in her chair with one arm resting on the table. “And here I was thinking you must have really enjoyed yourself, since you decided to start one of your own.”

 

Irritation and shame prickled in his ears, heat flushing across his cheeks. He slumped even further in his chair and resolutely refused to look at her, gritting his teeth. If he didn’t say anything, then maybe, just maybe, she’d drop it.

 

She didn’t.

 

“Wanting to ‘free people from poverty’ sounds good on paper, I know,” she continued, tapping her nails on the tabletop in much the same way as the King tapped his against the throne. “But you never did think things through.”

 

Ben huffed half a laugh, his lip curling. “That didn’t take long. Ten minutes and you’re already calling me an idiot.”

 

“Don’t you turn this around on me,” she said, wagging her finger. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

 

“What did you mean, then?” Ben asked sharply, turning to her now that the anger was hot and hard in his belly.

 

“I meant, you were an irresponsible child,” she replied with a sweeping gesture, as if that was any better. “You were always doing things without considering the consequences.”

 

“I was _eleven years old,_ ” Ben snapped.

 

“You hit the dog with a cutting board,” Leia snapped back, sitting back in her chair and folding her own arms over her chest. “I loved that dog.”

 

“Well, at least you loved _something_.”

 

The words had teeth, and Leia straightened, taken aback for a moment before she scowled. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

 

“Nothing,” Ben bit, and shoved himself to his feet, pacing back towards the door. “It doesn’t mean a _god damned_ thing.”

 

She called his name, not beseeching but commanding, in a _come back here you little shit_ sort of tone. He ignored her, stomped out through the dining room and the entryway and back out onto the porch, the fresher air of the dying afternoon stinging his throat as he breathed. He could hear Poe’s voice, his mother’s raised, arguing about something — caught _Mrs O, please, will you just_ and _nine months, nine months I carried that boy, and this is how he treats me_. Then a moment of silence, and footsteps, and a distant slamming door.

 

Ben felt Poe coming up behind him, felt him hesitate, the porch squeaking as he shifted from one foot to the other.

 

“She, uh… She says your room is how you left it.” Poe paused again. “Are you alright?”

 

“I’m fine,” Ben said, and pushed past him back into the house.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

…

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

His room wasn’t how he left it. He’d left it messy, his bed unmade and the little wooden toys Uncle Chewie used to make him scattered all over the floor, a book opened face-down on the window seat and the cross stitch of an angel holding lilies fallen from the wall and rolled into a corner. Someone — Pio, probably — had set everything to rights. Ben almost laughed. It was too perfect. They wanted the boy, but not the mess.

 

His bed was a good foot too short for him. He could barely sit sideways in the window seat anymore. Everything looked shrunk, the wooden deer and dogs and rabbits tiny in his hands, the soldiers that he’d once had to wrap his fingers around now fitting in his palm. Even the books seemed smaller, thinner, cheaper. Everything he looked at, everything he touched, said _you don’t belong here_. _Not anymore._

_Gain her trust_ , the King had said. That wasn’t going to happen. Not now.

 

Two out of three had to be enough.

 

He got back up off the bed and walked to the door. She was in her room — he could hear her in there, stomping around. All he had to do was go down the hall and snap her neck. She wouldn’t feel a thing. She wouldn’t even know what had happened. Just one moment she was alive, and the next she wasn’t.

 

He stood with his hand on the handle for a long, long while. Then he turned, slumped against the door, slid down with his head in his hands and cried.

 

 

He tried to keep it quiet. He’d been good at that, when he was younger. At Uncle Luke’s he’d cried himself to sleep every night for months, face buried in his pillow to muffle the hiccuping sobs. Now, though… he was so _tired_. His bones ached, and every inch of him was heavy, his chest constricting as if he were being torn apart. His hand still hurt. He was hungry, and thirsty, and he felt like he hadn’t slept in years. And he was alone, and everything that should have been familiar was strange, and he was so _weak_ and _stupid_ , bashing the heels of his hands into his skull until his head pounded. He’d said, hadn’t he, that he would do anything, would burn the world to have Fox back, so what was the life of one old woman? He’d already murdered an innocent old man.

 

Cut his heart out, he just wanted to cut his heart out, like they did in the stories, keep it in a box so he never had to feel anything ever again. No more fear, no more worry, no more guilt. He could do what he had to and feel nothing, he could be _strong_ if only he were hollow, if only he were empty. He was sick of this, so _fucking sick._

He heard footsteps in the hallway and clapped his hands over his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to hold his breath as best he could with shuddering lungs. They paused in front of his door. He could feel her, on the other side, a little glimmering spark reaching out, and for a moment all he wanted was for her to open that door, to wrap her arms around him and tell him it would be okay, to listen as he told her everything, just blabbed it all out like he had when he was six years old and broke the china doll she’d taken from the ashes of Alderaan. She’d smoothed his hair down and hugged him against her chest and told him it was alright, that she forgave him, that it was just a doll and she knew he hadn’t meant to break it. He wanted her to kiss him on the forehead again and make him lemonade and talk about something else until he laughed again and they both knew everything was alright.

 

The footsteps continued on down the stairs.

 

Ben hugged his legs to his chest. It was fine. It was what he deserved.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

…

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He didn’t sleep that night. He couldn’t bear to look Fox in the eye and know this could all be over if only he were stronger. So he sat in the window seat and stared out over the duck pond and the corral with its crumbling fence, the overgrown pasture, the stable with its many-colored patches. He saw a glimmer of light from between the chinks in the boards and wondered briefly who was up so late. Artoo, probably. Pio slept like the dead.

 

Morning came slowly, shadows stretching long over the property like dark fingers clinging to life. Ben hadn’t seen many dawns here — he’d always been a late sleeper, prone to drifting and drowsing, painting pictures in his head as he slipped in and out of dreams. It was beautiful in a sad kind of way. This house, this land, belonged in autumn, not spring.

 

A few hours later, he heard more footsteps. Again they paused before his door. This time it opened, and Poe stepped in, carrying a plate of eggs and toast in one hand with a glass of pulpy orange juice floating along behind him.

 

“Your door locks from the outside,” Poe noted, gesturing to the iron plate bolted onto the door frame. “I’m guessing there’s a story behind that.”

 

“I used to get up at night and wander around the house,” Ben explained in an oddly hollow voice. “Break things. Steal things. Once I set the kitchen on fire trying to make myself bacon. They started locking me in after that.”

 

“I feel like there were other solutions to that problem,” Poe said as he handed the plate over, floating the nightstand towards them with a wave of his hand so he had somewhere to set the glass.

 

“It didn’t even work.” Ben fiddled with his toast, getting sticky marmalade on his fingers. “I just used magic to unlock the door.”

 

“Must have been tough for them,” Poe said, leaning up against the wall. “Trying to raise you without magic of their own.”

 

Ben said nothing, taking a bite of the toast though it tasted thick and hard and sharp, the motions of chewing awkward, as if he hadn’t done it in years. If Poe hadn’t been standing there staring at him, he would have set it aside.

 

“I know you’re angry at her,” Poe said quietly. “You have every right to be. But it’s not doing either of you any good. It’s over. It’s done. Try to make something new. For all our sakes.”

 

Ben swallowed. It was like gulping down damp glass. He put the toast down.

 

“Why haven’t you given up on me yet?”

 

“I don’t have a choice.” Poe smiled. “It’s you and me until the wheels fall off. Or you let me go. Whichever comes first.”

 

Ben looked away, out the window. He could see his own reflection, just barely, the light of his skin surrounded by darkness. In the glass, his eyes looked like the King’s, black and empty.

 

“I was rotten,” he murmured, staring into his own eyes. “Why would anyone want a rotten son?”

 

“You’re not rotten,” Poe said, reaching out to ruffle Ben’s hair. “You’re wine. You’re just not ready yet.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

…

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Ben stayed in his room at first. After a while, the walls got too close, the ceiling too low, the wall with his mother’s room too thin. He didn’t want to be there anymore. So, a little while after he heard Pio call the others for lunch, he went down the creaking stairs and slipped outside.

 

The day was clear, the broad blue of the sky marred only by the occasional translucent wisp of white, like the caps of distant waves. Bees buzzed around Pio’s garden and a dragonfly darted past him back towards the duck pond. As a child, he would have run after it, ran out into the mud and reeds to find the nymphs and tadpoles still darting around the water. Now he came close, but the threat of newly hatched mosquitoes and sucking mud around the edge of the pond turned him away. There were no ducks at the moment, but birdsong warbled in the trees surrounding the property, twills and twitters he wouldn’t have been able to reproduce but recognized instantly, like a familiar smell.

 

Without really thinking about what he was doing, he went looking for Artoo. Finding him wasn’t difficult. He sat on the porch of the bunkhouse where he and Pio slept, staring off into the middle distance with eyes gone cloudy with age. He was even smaller than Ben remembered him, more like a child curled in the old rocking chair than a man, though the deep lines in his mottled skin belied that. His hair, always wispy and white and patchwork, had receded into a thin ring around the back of his head, and there was more than a little white stubble prickling out along his jaw. He didn’t move when Ben approached, didn’t even turn his head at the sound of his footsteps.

 

“Hello, Artoo,” he said, a little louder than he should have. “It’s me. Ben.”

 

“He don’t talk no more,” a tiny female voice said.

 

When Ben looked up, he saw a young coppery face peeking out from around the bunkhouse door, large dark eyes ringed by long eyelashes looking up at him. The child caught him off-guard and he rocked back on his heels, glancing around for a mother, a father, anyone other than a blind old man.

 

“Who are you?” he asked her when no-one presented themselves. “Are you supposed to be here?”

 

“Course I’m s’pposed to be here,” the little girl said, still half hiding behind the door-frame. “I live here. Who’re you?”

 

“Uh… I’m Ben.” He shifted on his feet. His voice sounded even deeper than usual. “I live— I used to live here too. Well, up there.”

 

He twisted and gestured up at the white house on the hill behind him. The little girl edged farther into the bunkhouse.

 

“You a master?”

 

“No,” Ben said, holding out a hand in what he hoped was a comforting manner. “No, I’m not. I’m just visiting.”

 

Cautiously, the little girl stepped out. Her dark hair poofed in an orb around her head, barely held back from her face with a strip of orange and white cloth. Her dress was made from the same fabric, revealing a pattern of simple flowers with full, round petals. Her knees were scraped and her bare feet were covered in cracking mud.

 

“Do you have shoes?” he asked hesitantly, edging closer and crouching down.

 

“Course I has shoes,” she replied indignantly. “I’m not a _barbrairian_.”

 

For the first time in a long while, Ben felt himself smile. “How old are you?”

 

“I’m nine,” she says with exaggerated solemnity. “But don’t tell Mister Poe. He says I’m four, but I’m nine.”

 

“You know Poe?” Ben asked, crouching down to meet her eye level. She clasped her arm behind her back and toed at the warped planks.

 

“Yeah. He’s nice.”

 

“Yes,” Ben said. “Yes he is. You wouldn’t happen to be Beebee, would you?”

 

Her eyes went wide. “How’d you know?”

 

“I’m a magician,” he said with a smile. “Do you want to see?”

 

She nodded vigorously and Ben pulled Poe’s trick, summoning a bunch of flowers — orange and white to match her dress — and holding them out. Taking a few sliding steps, she skittered over to hide behind the pole supporting the porch roof, then leaned out precariously to take them. He let her hold them to her nose before he dissolved them into butterflies, white and orange wings beating against her face as she giggled and batted them away.

 

“I seen that before,” she whispered, biting her bottom lip and crossing her ankles, clinging to the pole to keep from tipping over.

 

“Oh, have you?” Ben asked as if that hadn’t occurred to him. “I’d better show you something else, then.”

 

“Yes,” she whispered and nodded again.

 

He thought for a moment, then shifted to the side to run his fingers through the stand of quackgrass growing by the short flight of steps.

 

“What’s your favorite animal?” he asked.

 

She thought for a moment, tiny uneven teeth working at her lip. “Birb.”

 

He closed his eyes for a moment, closed his fist and opened it three times. Then, giving her a significant look, he reached down into the clump of grass and pulled out a chickadee, with blades of green grass for feathers and white roots for feet. It hopped in his palm, looking around with dark stone eyes, and seeing the girl, squeaked at her with a beak made from part of a sunflower seed.

 

Beebee’s eyes flared with delight, her little hands coming up to smack against the sides of her face as she jumped up and down.

 

“Birb!” she squealed, her heels coming up higher than her knees as she jumped and spun. “Birb! Birb! Birb!”

 

Ben laughed, holding out his unoccupied hand. “Whoa, there. You’re going to scare it. Would you like to hold it?”

 

She stilled, energy twisting in her little limbs as she nodded, cupping her hands in front of her. Gently, Ben tipped the little bird into her palms. Its root feet tickled and she laughed, her shoulders rising up high around her ears.

 

“You can keep it, if you want,” Ben said.

 

“Keep it?” she whispered. “For mine?”

 

“For yours,” Ben agreed. “You’ll have to give it water every day, and give it dirt to sleep on. Think you can do that?”

 

She nodded so hard he was worried she would fall over, then spun in place, her attention all at once turned to the tiny creature in her hands.

 

“You mine, little birby, and I’m name you Pog, li’l Poggy, for mine, Pog a bog a log a dog—”

 

As she went back into the relative darkness of the bunkhouse, her little whispering voice trailed off. Ben watched her go, then, still smiling, stood.

 

“See?” Poe said, Ben jumping in his skin and whirling to see the man leaning against a nearby tree. “Give it a few months, and you’ll be Chardonnay.”

 

Taking a few deep breaths to calm the startled pattering of his heart, Ben stared at him. “You’ve been there the whole time, haven’t you?”

 

“Not the _whole_ time,” Poe said with a sardonic smile. “Heard you leave. Figured I’d see what you were up to. Making Beebee’s week, apparently.”

 

“Who is she?” Ben asked. “Where are her parents?”

 

“She doesn’t have any, as far as I know,” Poe said with a shrug, pushing off the tree. “I found her at a slave auction about a year and a half ago. Thought she was probably better off with me than any of the other sons of bitches who wanted to buy her.”

 

“And you left her here while you were out trying to kill me.”

 

“Pretty much,” Poe replied. “Mrs O’s been helping me look for a family to take her in.”

 

The two of them began to pace off, in no particular direction, following the grade of the hill back down towards the pond. Ben shoved his hands in his pockets.

 

“How do you know her?” he asked. “My mother.”

 

Poe shot him a sidewards glance. “You don’t know what she does, do you?”

 

“We used to raise horses,” Ben said, looking towards the empty corral. “Not anymore, apparently.”

 

Considering him for a moment, Poe reached out and took his arm. “Come with me.”

 

Poe steered them towards the stable. It was better kept than he would have thought given the state of the corral, with most of the chinks in the plank wall filled with mortar of a wide variety of ages and consistencies and several new boards along the ground where the old ones had rotted away. The doors were especially sturdy, and strangely, closed. Poe rapped on them with the back of his knuckles.

 

“Ackbar,” he called. “It’s me.”

 

The name was vaguely familiar, though Ben couldn’t place it at first. He frowned, listening to the quiet shuffle coming from within the stables. A hinge creaked and a man with a deep voice spat a quiet curse, and then the door swung open.

 

Ben recognized the man instantly; with his high domed forehead and strange bugged eyes and fleshy lips, Ackbar’s face was one he remembered, though he’d come to the house three, maybe four times in Ben’s memory. He’d fought with his parents in the war, one of the slaves who’d joined the ranks in exchange for their freedom. He’d risen quite high, if Ben remembered correctly. Now, though, he looked like a runaway, old straw stuck to his cheap cotton shirt and a tear in his breeches. Seeing Ben, his sparse brows sunk and his shallow nose flared.

 

“No outsiders,” he barked, alternating his glare between Ben and Poe. “We agreed. Too risky.”

 

“Ackbar, this is Ben,” Poe said jovially, clapping Ben on the shoulder. “Mrs O’s son.”

 

“Ben?” Those brows furrowed further. “Ben Solo? Are you sure? I remember him being… shorter.”

 

“Well, it’s been sixteen years,” Poe replied with a flashing smile. “Can we come in?”

 

Ackbar fixed Ben with another searching glare, then harrumphed and stepped backwards. Poe ushered Ben in.

 

Where the tack had once been stored, there was now a small kitchen, with a pit dug in the floor for a fire and battered old pots hung from the hooks on the walls. A thin woman and a thinner child, both bald and wide-eyed, sat around it, tending to a barely steaming stew. On the other side, bolts of old fabric and an ottoman he remembered being stored in the attic provided seating for three men, two young and strong and one Ackbar’s age, with one white eye and a scraggly beard. They were all various shades of brown, dressed simply, and staring at him with deep distrust. One of the young men reached behind him and grabbed a shovel leaning against the wall.

 

“What is this?” Ben asked, looking around. There were more people in the stalls, shrinking back into corners and hiding under horse blankets and quilts that used to be stored in closets in the house in case of a cold winter’s eve.

 

“I got papers, sir,” the woman with the child said, reaching under the wind of her apron and pulling out a folded slip. “We both do. Lord strike me down if it ain’t true.”

 

Ben took the proffered slip. It was a road pass, with an illegible signature and smeared ink, faded where the paper had been folded over and over.

 

Ben took a deep, slow breath, in and out through his nose. The woman pulled her child tight to her breast as if he might snatch her away, and the two young men stood, the one with the shovel cocking it over his shoulder.

 

“This pass,” Ben said, “is for one Joseph Emmanuel Black. Last I checked, Joseph wasn’t a woman’s name.”

 

Grabbing the paper by one corner, he flicked his wrist, the snap of the paper startling the man now raising the shovel to strike and almost making him drop it. The worn crinkles disappeared and the ink darkened, shifting over the surface to form new letters, new words. Examining it for a moment, he handed the slip back to the wondering woman.

 

“Eliza Jane is.”

 

“You’re a magician,” the man with the shovel breathed, his eyes so wide the white showed all the way around.

 

“Yes, I am,” Ben replied, turning to look at the grinning Poe. “And I’m wondering how this one let such shoddy work pass.”

 

Poe smirked. “Did you forget the part where I’ve been with you for three months?”

 

“That’s no excuse,” Ben countered. “How long has this been going on?”

 

“Years,” Ackbar grumbled. “Since the war.”

 

Ben looked at him. “So when I was eleven, there were people living in the stable, and I somehow never noticed?”

 

“We routed them through Luke’s back then.” Leia came in slowly, her arms folded across her chest and the faintest hint of a smile playing on her lips. “After he left, we had to compromise.”

 

“Why did you never tell me?” Ben asked.

 

“We couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t tell,” she said with a shrug. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

 

 _In other words,_ Ben thought, _you didn’t trust me._ His hand clenched at his side.

 

“We could use your help,” Leia continued. “If you’re willing.”

 

 _No_ , Ben wanted to say, if only to spite her. If only because it was the _strong_ thing to do, the selfish thing, the wolfish thing. But, the King had said, _gain her trust._

Ben nodded.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

…

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

For the second time in as many weeks, Ben threw himself into work. Only this time, there was a never-ending supply. While Poe was busy taking people through the Kingsroads, Ben forged papers, fixed clothes, built an underground cubby where the runaways could hide if the slave catchers ever came calling. He kept as much distance between himself and the slaves as he could — it was always ‘thank you, sir’ and ‘you’re a wonderful man Mister Ben, a wonderful man’, and it made him deeply uncomfortable. He wasn’t doing it for them. He was doing it for a monster with stars in its eyes.

 

In the rare moments when the tiny community in the stable had no need of him, he worked on the house. It bothered him in a way he couldn’t quite explain to see it falling apart, to see the land going fallow. He fixed the swing — kept it crooked, just the way he remembered — and stopped the creaks and squeaks and groans, smoothed the paint out and returned the worn wooden floors to their old shiny luster. It was better this way, to work himself to exhaustion and collapse on his tiny bed and spend the nights thinking about what he would do tomorrow. It hurt less.

 

A rain came on the ninth night, nowhere near the summer storms he remembered, but accompanied by distant cracks of lightning and a steady downpour that continued on into the morning. When he went down to the stable to see what needed doing, he found water puddled on the floor and soaked into blankets the inhabitants had draped across the stalls in a valiant effort to stay dry, and cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. He ran up a staircase of stones — much to a watching Beebee’s delight — and set to work growing new shingles, repairing the old ones, knitting the roof together so nothing short of a lightning strike could tear it apart. The work was time-consuming — making it look like the work of men, at least — but he found he preferred it. It was quiet up on the roof, but he could still catch the quiet murmur of conversation from below, glance over and see Beebee chasing butterflies through the pasture, look up at the house and see the thin white trail of smoke from the chimney as Pio worked away.

 

Around midday, he heard someone shout his name, loud and sharp as if he’d done something wrong. Looking up, he saw his mother sprinting towards the stable.

 

“Ben!” she barked again. “What are you doing, get down from there, you’re going to get yourself killed! What are you _thinking_?!”

 

The stable was not a high building, and he’d climbed it before. Then again, he’d gotten in trouble then, too. For reasons he didn’t examine too closely — spite, or some dark sense of humor, or just a temporary streak of sadism — he stood up and walked right off the edge of the roof. His mother gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth, but he didn’t fall, standing in mid-air looking down at her. He threw his arms out to the sides.

 

“I’m a magician, Mother,” he said flatly. “I’m fine.”

 

His mother breathed into her hands for a moment. “I dropped the lemonade.”

 

He suppressed a smirk and let himself fall, slowly, like a puff of cotton on the wind. When he was down she grabbed his arm, pawing at him as if to make sure he really was fine. Then she smacked him on the shoulder, hard.

 

“Don’t you _ever_ do that to me again!” she chided. “I had more than enough of this when you were a boy!”

 

The smirk came out then, a brief bitter curl of his lip. “You must have been happy to be rid of me.”

 

“Are you kidding?” Leia said, tucking her hands under her arms as if she were cold. “I cried for six months straight.”

 

Ben huffed, half a laugh and half a scoff. “No, you didn’t. The first thing Luke taught me was how to scry. So don’t pretend you cared.”

 

She drew back, looking at him as if she couldn’t understand what he was saying. He hadn’t meant to put it quite so plainly, and he looked away, his hand coming up to grip his shoulder. The set of her arms changed, becoming harder, stronger, and her head tilted to the side.

 

“Is that what you think? That I didn’t care?”

 

 _Gain her trust_. Ben squirmed for a moment, then turned back towards the stable. “I have work to do.”

 

She let him go. For a while, she watched him work, and her hard gaze distracted him, split his focus so the shingles grew crooked and warped and he had to spend almost as much time fixing them as he did making them to begin with. Then, after an eternity, she turned and walked back towards the house.

 

He stayed out until the light died, sitting on the roof and perfecting it far beyond what was necessary in a blisteringly successful attempt to keep from talking to anyone. Pio came tottering out around four to tell him supper was ready, and Ben shooed him away with promises that he would be down in a minute, he just had to finish this and that and the other thing. Eventually, with the sun well below the horizon and another storm lingering heavy in the air, he slipped down off the roof and ambled back inside, following the savory smell of chicken with biscuits and gravy into the kitchen.

 

Just as he was sitting down to eat, he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. His mother appeared in the doorway, dust on her rolled-up sleeves and on the knees of her green trousers.

 

“Ben,” she said. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

 

Reluctantly, he got up and followed her back up the stairs and down the hall to her room. It was exactly as he remembered it, down to his father’s things; the little model of the _Falcon_ Uncle Chewie had made for him, the portrait of Uncle Lando floating on a cloud Lando had given Han one Christmas, the little collection of coins from all the places Han had visited lined up along the edge of the bookcase. The boxes above the wardrobe had been brought down, clumps of dust flitting across the carpet in the breeze of the opening door. One sat on the bed, the dust wiped away to leave the plain wood gleaming.

 

Leia settled onto the mattress next to it and patted the quilted green and cream bedspread beside her. Careful to keep his distance, Ben sat. He didn’t know what this was about. He’d seen the box, many times — as long as he could remember, it had always lived on top of the wardrobe, untouched for thirty years. He had no idea what was inside it. Leia set her hand on the warm, polished lid, her fingers running over the little strip of scroll work around the edges. Then she picked it up and held it out until he took it.

 

Inside the box was a mask. Black and covered in shiny resin that was bubbled and burnt in places, it looked almost like the face of a deformed dog, with a short triangular snout fronted with a grill for the mouth, and large black eye holes filled with dark glass. As he turned it in his hands, he saw that the inside was spotted with dull flecks of old blood, where the soot and the char hadn’t reached.

 

“Did anyone ever tell you the story of how your grandfather died?” his mother asked quietly.

 

Struck with a kind of awe, Ben didn’t look up, shaking his head as he ran his fingers over the angular planes of the mask like it was a treasure. Leia sighed and sat back against the headboard.

 

“It was 1782,” she said, pulling one leg up to her chest and wrapping her arms around it. “The English had built a fort on the Mississippi to cut off the Revolutionary Army’s supply lines. Fort Todesstern, they called it. Hulking place, full of enough manpower and ammunition to hold out till Judgment Day. None of us knew how to break it, so your uncle went in alone, under the pretenses of defecting to the English. Vader and Darth Sidious were both there, and one way or another, they decided Luke and your grandfather should duel. Settle things between them once and for all.

 

“The fight was close. Luke almost died a hundred times. But in the end, Vader ended up on the ground without a hand, Luke standing over him, ready to strike the final blow.” She hugged her leg a little closer. “The way Luke told it, the world slowed down. Vader’d taken Luke’s hand at the ambush at Bespin — but you know that. He looked at Vader’s stump, and his own, and had a moment, when he realized the two of them weren’t that different, under all of it. The only thing that was keeping him from becoming what Vader was, was the part of him that still remembered mercy. So he let Vader live.

 

“Sidious thought the whole thing was hilarious. Said Luke was too weak to join them. He hit Luke with lightning, over and over, killing him little by little while he laughed. Luke still has the scars.”

 

“Vader turned,” Ben murmured, running a thumb over one of the scorched glass eyes. “Didn’t he?”

 

“He did,” Leia replied. “He couldn’t watch his son be murdered in front of him, even though they’d only known each other as enemies. He snapped Sidious’ back and threw him down a well, but not before Sidious burned him half alive.”

 

She reached out and took the mask back, turning it to look down into the mangled facsimile of a face. Ben thought he caught a scent wafting from it, the lingering odor of charred flesh and death. He shivered.

 

“Luke gave this to me the day you were born,” she said, running her fingers along the mask’s curved forehead. “He said he wanted it to be a reminder. A reminder that it’s never too late to turn back. That it’s never too late to be a better person, a better _parent_ , than you were the day before. That forgiveness and mercy are all we really have, in the end.” She smiled and wiped her eye. “I never did get a hang of the last part.”

 

Considering the mask for a moment, she held it out again.

 

“Here. I want you to have it.”

 

Ben took it. His throat closed and his chest ached. The burnt wood felt warm in his hands.

 

“I love you,” Leia said quietly, reaching out to smooth her hand down his hair. “I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry I made you feel like I didn’t. Han and I were never good enough for you, and we knew it. That’s why we sent you away. We thought Luke, with all his magic and his training and his wisdom, could give you something we couldn’t. We thought you would be better off.”

 

She embraced him then, as she hadn’t before, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding him tight. He could feel tears on his shoulder, hear the little hitch in her breath as she fought the weeping back. He’d never seen her cry before. It felt strange, to have her clinging to him like that, as if she were the child and he the parent, searching fruitlessly for some way to comfort her, some way to make things right.

 

“Poe told me what’s going on,” she said, her voice wavering and strong at the same time. “He told me about Fox. I can’t say I understand it, but I know what it’s like to have the man you love taken away from you. You’ve always been a fighter, Ben, right from the start. The King doesn’t stand a chance.”

 

His eyes prickled and burned, and then there were tears falling down his cheeks, and his arms were wrapped around her and he held on to her so tightly it must have hurt, but she said nothing, just smoothed down his hair and pressed a kiss to the side of his head the way she had when he woke up screaming in the night. Suddenly he was eleven years old again, and that was all it took to make it right, all it took to make it better; his mother’s arms around him and a kiss to the side of his head.

 

“I’m sorry,” he gulped, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

 

“It’s alright,” she hushed. “It’s alright, Ben. I love you so much.”

 

He struggled to swallow, once and again, trembling. His hands curled into shaking fists and he closed his eyes. All he had to do was one quick _snap_ , end it, end it and he could have Fox back and all it would take…

 

He couldn’t. He couldn’t do it. Not even for Fox.

 

He tore away from her and stood, running a hand through his hair so fast he ripped strands from the root. He looked down at the mask, at the burnt eyes staring up at him, like the King’s eyes, gleaming in the light of the candle on the nightstand. Casting it aside, he slammed the heel of his hand into his temple.

 

“ _Stupid_ ,” he spat, pacing back and forth so fast he was almost turning on the spot and hitting himself again and again. “ _Stupid_ and _weak_ and _useless_ , I’m so fucking—”

 

His mother rushed up to him, grabbing his wrist and pulling him into another hug. Her cheek pressed against his chest and her other hand wrapped up around the back of his neck, trying to cradle him despite his height.

 

“No, Ben, you’re not,” she promised. “You’re not, you’re so strong, you’re my big strong baby boy.”

 

He pressed his lips to the top of her head and took a shuddering breath, then another, until he felt like he could speak again without screaming.

 

“I’m supposed to kill you,” he whispered.

 

She froze.

 

“I can have Fox back,” he explained, sliding his hand up her arm to rest along the side of her neck. “All I have to do…”

 

Slowly, he felt her start breathing again, even and controlled. Her hand squeezed the back of his neck almost reflexively.

 

“Do it, then,” she murmured. “If that’s the only way.”

 

His chest ached and he closed his eyes. “I can’t. I’m not strong enough.”

 

A moment passed. Then, Leia spoke, the way she had when she’d come down the stairs to find the kitchen on fire and him sobbing in the middle still holding the pan.

 

“Ben,” she said slowly, “if you think following orders takes more strength than doing the right thing, then I don’t know _who_ the hell you are, but you aren’t my son.”

 

Ben sucked in a shallow breath. And another. And another.

 

And then suddenly he was laughing, laughing and crying at once, clinging to her so tightly he could barely breathe.

 

“Figure it out, dummy,” his mother said, moving her hand to bop him gently on the head. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

 

“I don’t know,” he breathed, suddenly light-headed and shaking, his mind spinning like a hurricane. “I don’t know what to do.”

 

“Well…” she ran her hand over his hair again. “If I were in your shoes, I would go see Luke. But that’s just a suggestion.”

 

 _Unmake_ _a fairy_. Every muscle in his body tensed.

 

“Mother,” he said slowly, “you’re a genius.”

 

“I know.” Rocking up on her toes, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Give ‘em hell.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

.


	13. May 21st; Morning

**May 21st; Morning**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

By the time Poe got back, Ben had carved every anti-scrying ward he knew into the floor of his old bedroom, along with a few he made up. Scrying it himself resulted in nothing, a thin shimmer of magic on the surface of the water that reflected only the ceiling. Even the spell he’d had Poe teach him turned up little more than a silvered silhouette, the vague forms of his furniture pushed up against the walls like ghosts in a thick mist. The King’s would be stronger, but not, he hoped, strong enough.

 

“Pio said you were looking—” He paused mid-step, looking down at the circles of glyphs dug deep into the wood. “Okay, this is new. What are we doing?”

 

Ben picked up the porcelain bowl he’d snagged from the kitchen and held it out.

 

“I need you to do something for me,” he said, struggling to keep his voice level. “If you do, I’ll let you go.”

 

Poe’s eyes went wide, and he nodded.

 

Poe found Luke without trouble. Ben, hovering over the other man’s shoulder, found himself gritting his teeth. His old master sat cross-legged in the center of a strange kind of library with square cubbies set into the walls for shelves, a many-folded piece of vellum three feet long stretched across his lap. He’d aged, as much as Ben’s mother had, if not more, white streaking through his hair and beard and deep, sad lines etched into his face. Beside him was a silver oil lamp, burning hot to fight back the shadows of the low-ceilinged room. Ben pointed to it.

 

“There. Go through that. Tell him… Tell him Ben needs his help.”

 

Poe looked at him. “You’re not coming with me?”

 

“The King could be watching me. Hopefully he isn’t watching you.”

 

Slowly, Poe nodded again, dispelling the image with a wave of his hand.

 

“Bring him back,” Ben said, his hand falling to Poe’s shoulder. “Whatever it takes.”

 

“I’ll do what I can,” Poe replied, holding his hand out over the surface of the water. He paused, and looked at Ben again, over his shoulder. His mouth opened, then closed again. Then, taking a deep breath, he disappeared like mist before the sun.

 

Ben had never been good at waiting. He worked over the glyphs again, added new ones to the walls, paced back and forth until he was dizzy. Luke would have told him to be still, inside and out; to meditate on his anxiety and in so doing, conquer it. He’d never been good at that, either.

 

Then, he turned and found Uncle Luke looking at him with mournful blue eyes brimming with tears.

 

 Before he could think to react, Luke strode across the carved floor and wrapped his arms around him, crushing him against his chest.

 

“Ben,” Luke said in a soft, shaky voice that didn’t sound like his. “It’s good to see you again.”

 

Ben refused to let himself cry again. They didn’t have time. He embraced Luke briefly, then pushed him back, struggling to keep his breathing steady.

 

“Uncle Luke, I need your help.”

 

“I know,” Luke replied, taking a step back as he composed himself. “Poe told me. I have what you’re looking for.”

 

A rush of joy ran through Ben like wildfire and he had to take a moment just to breathe, his heart pattering in his chest. Luke reached out and touched his shoulder.

 

“It may not be true,” he cautioned. “All I have are legends a thousand generations old. But it makes sense. The fairies are part of the natural order, just like everything else.”

 

“Tell me,” Ben breathed.

 

First, Luke motioned for them to sit, and Ben did, his head buzzing. Suddenly he was fifteen again, settled in for a lesson with the other children. He swallowed hard and tried not to be impatient.

 

“There are stories in dozens of cultures, filtered down from the days when Faerie and Earth were one, many seeming to describe the same event,” Luke intoned, the same voice he’d used to impart history or philosophy when Ben was young. “There is one in particular found only in the oral histories of various tribes, from the Amazon to Africa to the wilds of Australia. It is similar, in many respects, to the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, though it differs—”

 

“Maybe skip to the end,” Poe suggested. Luke glared at him, but complied.

 

“A powerful enough magician can, with the use of a fairy’s true name, command that fairy to die. As far as I know, it’s never been fully tested, only used as leverage to aid bargainers in their negotiations, but it wouldn’t work if it wasn’t true.”

 

“You can just…” Poe gestured. “ _Tell_ a fairy to die?”

 

“With the fairy’s true name, yes.”

 

“What’s his name?” Ben asked Poe. “Tell me you know his name.”

 

Poe looked at him for a long moment, Ben’s heart sinking with every passing second. Then Poe shook his head and the gleam of hope in Ben’s chest crumpled.

 

“No-one does. I’m sorry.”

 

None of them said anything. The other two looked at Ben, watching as he slowly clasped his hands in front of his face as if in prayer.

 

“There is another option,” Luke said carefully. “You might not be able to kill the King, but you _could_ release yourself from your contract. Without a link to the Faerie Realm, the King would have no power over you.”

 

Ben didn’t understand at first. Then he did, and anger flared in his gut.

 

“You want to get out of this room,” he said, flat and low. “Right now.”

 

“Ben—”

 

“I’m not killing Fox,” he snapped.

 

Again there was silence, Luke and Poe glancing at one another. Poe inched forward, drawing the leg he had cocked closer to his chest.

 

“It might be a mercy,” he said softly. Ben shot him a hard look and Poe sighed. “I scried you, the first night we were here. I know what the King did. And if I were trapped like that—”

 

“No,” Ben grit, his nails digging into his palms. “We are _not_ discussing this.”

 

“What else are you going to do? Kill your mother?” Poe asked. Rocking back, Ben clenched his fists so hard his knuckles went white. “I’m not stupid, Ben. I figured it out a while ago. You might have to go with the lesser of two evils here.”

 

Ben rocketed to his feet. “The lesser of two evils? The _lesser of two evils_? Killing an old woman who’s going to die anyway or killing a man who could live for forever, that’s what you want me to decide?”

 

Poe stood too, squaring off to Ben with his own hands balled. “What about killing an innocent woman who’s done nothing but good or the monster behind some of history’s greatest horrors? Nero, Attila, Vlad the Impaler—”

 

“I can’t live without him, Poe!” Ben shouted.

 

“You have,” Poe countered a heartbeat later, calm and hard. “For almost eight months.”

 

Ben stepped into Poe’s space, staring him down. “I went _five years_ without him before, and it never got better. It just got worse and worse until I couldn’t take it anymore, and I can’t do that again. I’d rather die.

 

“I get it,” Poe said gently. “I do. Living three hundred years, I’ve had my share of heartbreak. And yeah, you want to die for a while, but you get over it. Life goes on, and eventually you do it all over again.”

 

“I don’t have three hundred years,” Ben replied. His fists shook by his sides. “And I don’t want to do it again. _I’m not killing Fox_.”

 

Taking a few deep breaths, Poe straightened. He looked at Luke, standing silently beside them, then at his own feet, then back up to meet Ben’s gaze.

 

“Then let me go. You said you would.”

 

A wolf would have gone back on the deal. Ben was tempted. He didn’t want Poe as an enemy again, and he wasn’t sure he would be the one to walk away from another fight.

 

But there wasn’t a point. He couldn’t kill his mother and he couldn’t kill Fox, and there were worse ways to go. And at least he’d be avoiding whatever the King did to failures.

 

He closed his eyes, reached out. His hand lit on Poe’s chest, just above the brilliant spark of his soul. There were chains around it, red-hot bands of magic binding him tight to Ben’s will. Ben touched them, and just like that, they dissolved like so much smoke, disappearing into nothing as if they’d never been there at all. Poe’s spark flared bright and the man gasped, his hand coming up to lay over Ben’s. Ben could feel the quick flutter of his heart.

 

“Thank you,” Poe breathed.

 

_Any second now_ , Ben thought.

 

He was glad, in a way. After all he’d done, he deserved to be punished, and after all he’d put Poe through, Poe deserved to be the one to do it. He kept his eyes closed, waiting for the _crack_ or the crush or however Poe decided to do it.

 

Poe squeezed his hand, then pulled away.

 

He heard Poe’s footsteps going out the door and down the stairs, but he didn’t quite believe it until he opened his eyes and the man was gone. Ben’s shoulders slumped.

 

Luke put his hand on Ben’s shoulder.

 

“Don’t give up,” he said. “The moment you cease to believe something is possible is the moment you fail. There is a way. There is always a way.”

 

Luke slipped past him and followed Poe down the stairs, and then Ben was alone.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Eventually, he went down the stairs too. Luke and Leia were in the kitchen, talking quietly and smiling at each other, hands clasped across the table. Poe was nowhere to be found. Outside clouds loomed on the horizon, bottoms fuzzy with distant rain.

 

He walked out into the pasture, not entirely sure why, other than that it was something to do. He hadn’t slept since the night before, and he never had gone back for his chicken and biscuits. Once he was far enough away that the sound of Beebee’s laughter as she chased her bird around the yard faded into nothing, he stopped. Then, for no reason other than the bone-deep exhaustion tugging on his bones, he sat in the overgrown grass. It reached almost to his head, spring leaves sharp and sticky with dew.

 

The wind blowing the clouds towards them was cold, and though the grass shielded him from the worst of it, he still found himself shivering, rubbing his hands together to keep his fingers warm. Eventually, he shoved them in his pockets.

 

There was a piece of paper in one of them. For a moment, he didn’t remember what it was. Then he drew it out and saw the Greek letters, and remembered.

 

_To speak to the Earth_ , it read. The magic was breathtakingly simple, as most of the stronger magics were; you simply had to know the right words, and you could ask for anything, even, apparently, an audience with the planet. It was nonsense, most likely — Ben had spoken to plenty of things, and not one of them had ever spoken back — and he crumpled it up in a ball and tossed it away.

 

Then he laboriously pulled himself forward and took it back.

 

It wasn’t as if he had anything to lose.

 

_Lay down,_ the paper read, _and place the bare head upon the ground. Close the eyes and focus the ears to the deep sounds. Speak the words, then be quiet so as to hear the reply._ There was a little note scrawled to the side of the instructions that read — Ben thought, his Greek was less than stellar — ‘it is the hands’. Whatever that meant.

 

Ben lay down. The dew soaked through his coat immediately, prickling cold on his back and the back of his head. He closed his eyes, and tried to listen for the ‘deep sounds’, the familiar rumble of the rock and the mountain he’d learned to love. Then, sighing deeply, he said the words.

 

“ _Oh mighty Earth, I ask you, the heart of all things, to grant to me, your humble servant, the pleasure of your voice. Speak to me, oh wonder of wonders, so I may know bliss.”_

For a moment, nothing happened.

 

Then, as he had in Siberia, he got the feeling of someone laughing, far away. No sound, just a feeling, in the back of his mind.

 

_Oh, lover,_ the laughter said, _you_ do _have a way with words._

Staring up at the slowly darkening sky, Ben blinked. Then he sat up, rubbing his forehead. Maybe he was even more exhausted than he thought. He stayed sitting there for a long while, waiting for more ghostly voices to filter into his head, but none came. Beebee shrieked and giggled in the distance, but that was it. Cautiously, he lay back down and tried again.

 

_You know, a simple ‘hello’ would do,_ the voice said. _You and I are old friends, after all._

“ _You’re the Earth_ ,” Ben said, feeling vaguely stupid. “ _You’re actually talking to me._ ”

 

_Of course, dearest. Who else would it be?_

_Madness,_ Ben thought. _Shrieking, jibbering madness._

“ _Nothing’s ever spoken to me before._ ”

 

_Have you ever asked?_

“ _No_ ,” Ben admitted, pausing. “ _Why did you call me ‘lover’?_ ”

 

_That’s what we are,_ the voice said with a sultry chuckle. _We play together, and fight together, and you tell me such lovely stories. And, of course, you’ve been inside of me._

Ben flushed, shifting uncomfortably. The voice laughed again.

 

_Don’t worry, lover. I_ like _being your mistress. Keeps the passion burning._

Ben paused for a moment to reflect on the fact that this was the strangest conversation he had ever had. He wondered what Fox would think about this, if Fox even knew it was possible. Then he swallowed.

 

“ _May I ask you a question?”_

_Since you’re so polite about it, of course._

_“Do you know the name of the King?”_

The Earth hummed, an almost-sound Ben could feel vibrating beneath him. _Which king, darling, there are so many._

“ _The King of the Fairies_.”

 

_Current or past?_

A furrow formed between Ben’s brows. “Um… _Current_.”

 

_The star-eyed boy, isn’t it? Yes, I know his name._

Ben’s heart began to hammer in his chest. He clasped his hands tight over his stomach, struggling not to get his hopes up, trying to be ready for the disappointment that felt inevitable at this point.

 

“ _Will you tell me?”_

_If you like,_ the voice said, _but it comes with a price._

_Of course,_ Ben thought. “ _Name it.”_

_Tell me another story,_ the Earth asked, with a smile in her voice.

 

Relief flooding through him, Ben laughed. Then he told her his.

 

“ _It was the year 1803, and for the first time in three hundred years, Fox heard the call.”_

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

When he finished, the Earth was silent for a long while. For a moment, he thought the spell had broken, or he really was mad, or the Earth had simply lost interest. That felt like a thing that could happen, today.

 

_It’s a lovely story,_ the Earth said, in a tone that felt quiet though the volume was the same. _Shame about the ending._

Ben’s heart stopped mid-stroke. “ _What do you mean?”_

_Fairy human romances always end the same, my dear. The mortal passes as mortals do, and the fairy is left behind. But the_ middles, _my love, oh the_ middles _, those are worth all the heartache and more. Makes me wish I had skin._

More laughter tittered in Ben’s mind and he suppressed a wan smile. Turning his head a little, he glanced down at the thick, dark dirt between the stalks of grass.

 

“ _We had a deal, ‘lover’.”_

_Yes, we did,_ the Earth said. _I owe you a name. Be careful with it now. They’re precious things._

When she told him, Ben grinned.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

.


	14. May 21st; Afternoon

 

**May 21st; Afternoon**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“Uncle Luke,” Ben said, stepping into the kitchen. “Can I talk to you for a minute? Upstairs?”

 

Luke looked him over for a moment, from his muddy clothes to the smile he couldn’t quite keep down. Nodding, he stood.

 

“By the way, Mother,” Ben added as Luke ambled towards the door. “Do you know where Poe is?”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“Poe,” Ben called as he came upon the man pacing through the strand of woods next to the property. The other man looked over his shoulder at him.

 

“What is it now?” Poe asked in an exhausted voice, his hands deep in his pockets and his shoulders hunched.

 

Ben grinned. “I have his name.”

 

Blinking, Poe straightened. “What? How?”

 

“It’s a long story. Will you help me?”

 

Glancing around the woods, Poe turned and came back towards him, looking at him sidelong. “This isn’t a trick. You really have his name.”

 

“I really have his name.”

 

Poe considered him, standing a little closer to Ben than he might have expected. Ben saw him swallow, saw his eyes flit away as he thought. Then Poe met his stare.

 

“On one condition,” he said. “Promise me that _this_ is who you are. Not Kylo Ren, not the guy who wants to rule the world. Promise me you won’t let Fox change you.”

 

“How about this,” Ben replied with a smile. “I promise to do what feels right. No more murdering helpless old men, no more starting proxy wars, no more doing what anyone else says. And if you disagree, you’re free to do what you should have done from the start.”

 

Poe laughed and held out his hand. “Agreed.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

..

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Rey was sleeping when they slipped through the blade she clutched tight in her hand and into the little cell. Her thin brows were pinched together in the beginnings of a frown and her feet twitched occasionally. Out of habit more than anything, Ben crouched down and tucked a stray strand of hair back behind her ear.

 

In a flash she grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward, pressing the edge of the knife against his throat. A breathless heartbeat later, her brown eyes cleared and she stared at him.

 

“ _Ben_?” she said, removing the blade and scrambling to sit up. “What are you doing here? Listen to me, you _can’t sleep_ , the King is _furious_ with you. I don’t know what you did but—”

 

“Rey,” he cut in, swiping at the sting on his neck before reaching out and touching her arm. “I know. I have a plan. But I need your help.”

 

She looked at him, at Poe standing behind him. “What kind of plan?”

 

“It’s too risky to explain it here,” Poe told her with a smile, “but trust me, it’s a good one, as far as semi-suicidal last ditch efforts go.”

 

“Come with me,” Ben said, sliding his hand down to hold her hand. “We can make it right again. The way it should be.”

 

Chewing on her lower lip, Rey glanced away, towards the warded door. “Alexander’s finally starting to trust me. I can’t just—”

 

“I’ll tell him what I did,” Ben promised. “I’ll tell him I was the one who left the envelope. I’ll tell him it was a trick. Whatever you want. Just save me, one last time. Please.”

 

She hesitated. Ben squeezed her hand, held his breath, waiting the long interminable seconds before she met his gaze again.

 

“You _owe_ me.”

 

Ben grinned. “I do. I owe you the world.”

 

“I don’t want the world,” Rey huffed, pushing herself to her feet. “I want a real bed in a real house somewhere that’s actually _green_.”

 

“Well, then,” Poe said with a grin, holding his arm out for her to take. “I’m about to make you a very happy woman.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

...

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Their room had changed significantly since he last saw it, semi-translucent dividing walls cropping up to section off the bed and a new claw-footed bathtub, enchanted so there was never a shortage of fresh, steaming water, and there were curtains around the bed now, thick and shimmering bright crimson in the witchlights scattered across the ceiling like orderly stars. Ben’s chest ached, but still he smiled, running his hand over the back of one of the driftwood chairs. It wasn’t as different as it could have been.

 

The ebony door opened and Phasma came in, undoing the red cravat wrapped around her neck as she did. She paused mid-step, looking at Ben and Poe with narrow, suspicious eyes.

 

“Kylo,” she said slowly, wrapping the cravat around her fist. “I thought we had an agreement.”

 

“We did,” Ben said, looking down at his hand on the back of his chair. “I’m not here to take back my kingdom, Phas. I just need your help.”

 

“Really,” she replied flatly, closing the door behind her and pacing into the room. “Because I distinctly remember you saying we were nothing without you. Seems a little daft to ask _nothing_ for help.”

 

Ben smiled again, a flush rising to his cheeks. He’d known that was going to come up.

 

“Yes, well… I’m an idiot. You were right. I was selfish and afraid and I treated you badly. You deserved better.”

 

“And yet here we are,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “What makes you think I want anything to do with you?”

 

He picked at a seam in the metal. He’d known from the beginning Phasma would be the hardest. He’d asked her to trust him once, and let her down. She wasn’t going to come easy.

 

“Because I need you,” he said earnestly, looking up at her. “And I’m starting to think ‘better’ is something I can do.”

 

She stared at him for a long while, expression unreadable, unchanging. Then she sighed and came over, pulling out the other chair and sitting down. Ben joined her.

 

“Tell me,” she said.

 

“I can’t,” Ben replied. “Not here. It’s too dangerous. But if you and the others come with me—”

 

“We already came with you,” she broke in, leveling him with a hard look. “Tell me now, or get out.”

 

Ben glanced at Poe. The other man shrugged. The King knew they were up to _something,_ and it was entirely possible their wards weren’t working in any case. There was just no way of knowing.

 

“Do you remember,” he began, lowering his voice and leaning forward, “when I said I was willing to sell my soul to get Fox back?”

 

Cautiously, Phasma nodded.

 

“Well, I found a way to kill the devil.”

 

She sat back, looking at him the same way she had when she first entered. “Is that so?”

 

“You can have Nettle back,” he continued in the same low tone. “Reed and Isis and Silver can go home. Fight with me, one more time. Help me do one last selfish, stupid thing.”

 

“How sure are you?” she asked, still cagey and distant.

 

“About fifty-fifty,” Poe replied. “Maybe less.”

 

“You want me to risk my life, and the lives of my friends, on less than fifty-fifty odds?”

 

“We’ve gone up against worse,” Ben said.

 

“No,” Phasma replied with a scoff. “We really haven’t.”

 

“This is the way out, Phas,” he promised. “As far as I can tell, it’s the _only_ way out. And it’s the right thing to do. We both know the world was better off without him. We can do this, Phas. You want a way to change the things? This is it.”

 

Again she stared at him. He could see her mind working, the little muscles in her temples twitching and the corners of her small lips pulling in tiny motions that could have been smiling or frowning or both.

 

“I can’t speak for the others,” she said eventually. “Their lives are their own. But you have me. For Nettle.”

 

He smiled at her. “For Nettle.”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

....

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

“Yes,” Mitaka said, a few heartbeats after Ben finished. “Of course. Us outcasts have to stick together.”

 

“I go where Doph goes,” Reed said, glancing around at the others. “And we owe Fox, all of us. He gave us bargainers. He brought us back into the world. Even if this might not work, I say we have to try.”

 

“I agree,” Isis put in. “I’m in.”

 

“Isis,” Ozymandias said quietly, touching her arm. “Are you sure?”

 

“You can stay if you like,” she replied, not unkindly. “But I remember the King from the old days. He was always a bully. I _hate_ bullies.”

 

“Well,” Gaius blustered, “ _I_ think it’s perfectly mad. Kings are due respect, even the bad—”

 

Silver smacked him upside the head.

 

“We’re in,” he said.

 

Poddleton just nodded.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

...........

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Ben’s bedroom hadn’t been built to hold twelve people. Luke stood on one side of the room, shooting nervous glances at the fairies crowded together on the other side, Silver matching his looks with a flat steady stare while Gaius fidgeted at their side, Reed wrapping his arms protectively around Mitaka’s waist and Isis perching on Ozymandias’ shoulders like an angry black parrot, her hair brushing the ceiling. The others stayed in between, Phasma standing with her arms crossed next to a nervous Poddleton while Rey and Poe sat together on the little bed Ben had pushed up against the wall. Ben stood in the center, feeling awkward under the weight of so many expectant eyes. He hated giving speeches. He could never find the right words.

 

“Right,” he said, taking a deep breath. “If we all know what we’re doing, there’s no reason to keep hanging around.”

 

“This is going to work,” Poddleton said with more surety than Ben would have expected from a babe about to walk into a lion’s den. “Isn’t it?”

 

“Probably,” Ben replied. “Maybe. We won’t know until we try.”

 

For some undoubtedly mysterious reason, that didn’t seem to inspire much confidence in the others. Reed’s arms tightened around Mitaka’s shoulders and Ozymandias visibly gulped. Ben sighed.

 

“It’s risky. Probably the riskiest thing any of us will ever do. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” He paused for a moment, looking around the room. “Look, I never really believed in fate. But Fox did. He believed I summoned him for a reason. He thought that meant I would conquer the world, be a great king, but I never wanted any of that. I just wanted to do magic, to be strong, like my grandfather. Like my uncle.” Luke nodded at him and he continued. “But now I wonder. Why me? Why now? Why not a hundred years from now, why not a hundred years _ago_ , why not Rey or Phasma or some kid in the Orient I don’t even know? And now, I think, it was because it had to be _us_.

 

“Look at us. Six magicians with fairies and the one man on the planet who knows how to kill them. Three fairies who’ve had hundreds, thousands of bargainers, but none of them as special as the ones you have now. And it’s not just because of the time in between. We were meant to be together. All of us.” He swallowed, suddenly feeling silly, but it was too late to go back now. “Fox said I have a destiny. And I think we all do. I think it’s this. This is why we met. This is why we became magicians. Because there was a time before the King and there’ll be a time after, and we’re the ones who are going to make that happen. So you want to know if I think it’s going to work? Yes. I think it’s going to work. Because otherwise, what’s the fucking point?”

 

The others looked at each other. Ben shifted on his feet. Eventually, Luke sighed.

 

“Not the most inspiring speech I’ve ever heard,” he said, “but it’ll do.”

 

The group shuffled quietly, shifting towards the bowl on the nightstand and grouping up as they’d agreed; Reed with Mitaka and Phasma, Isis with Ozymandias and Poddleton, Silver with Gaius and Luke. His hand hovering over the surface of the water, Mitaka paused.

 

He didn’t say anything. Just turned, straightened, and brought his hand to his forehead in an unpracticed salute. Ben, feeling a sudden pressure behind his eyes, saluted back.

 

As the next group approached the bowl, it was Poddleton who turned, his salute much sharper, his posture perfect, still a soldier after everything. Again, Ben returned the gesture, his throat closing.

 

Then came Luke. He smiled, the kind soft smile Ben remembered from days long past, and touched his fingers to his temple.

 

Poe put his hand around Ben’s shoulders.

 

“Don’t cry,” he murmured into Ben’s ear. “It’ll ruin the moment.”

 

“Shut up,” Ben groused as Luke and the others disappeared. Poe just smiled.

 

“Hey,” he said to Rey, “Think you could go on ahead a bit?”

 

Rey raised an eyebrow, but smiled and stepped up to the bowl, muttering the words that would take her to the Kingsroads. Now that they were alone, Ben was very aware of the weight of Poe’s arm, the warmth of his body.

 

“Hey,” Poe said in an oddly quiet voice. “There’s something I’ve wanted to say for a little while now, and I might not get another chance, so…”

 

Ben’s heart thumped in his chest. Poe bit his lip, hanging off Ben and looking down for a long moment. Then he glanced back up.

 

“You think Rey’s interested?” he asked. “Because I was getting kind of a vibe, you know, but I’m not sure—”

 

Ben shoved him off and laughed. “Why don’t you go ask her yourself? You’re three hundred years old, not thirteen.”

 

“Yeah,” Poe said with a strange kind of grin, backing towards the bowl. “Maybe I will. See you on the other side, brother.”

 

Ben smiled at him, and then Poe was gone.

 

Ben looked out the window. He had another hour till sunset. That should be enough time for the others to find their way to the path between worlds. If it existed. It _had_ to exist. George had seen.

 

He stood for a second, looking around the room at the mess he had made, his childhood carved into pieces and turned into something else. Then he went downstairs.

 

“Hello, Master Benjamin,” Pio said cheerily as he came into the kitchen. “Would you like some jambalaya?”

 

“Yes, _please_ ,” Ben said, slipping into his old chair. “Do you know where Mother is?”

 

“Out by the stable, if memory serves,” Pio replied, spooning a thick ladle of food onto a plate. “Shall I fetch her, Master Benjamin?”

 

Ben nodded, already picking up his fork.

 

He was halfway done by the time his mother slipped into the room, leaning against the door frame and smiling at him for a moment.

 

“Well, _someone’s_ developed an appetite. Good. I was beginning to worry.”

 

“It’s good,” Ben said through a mouthful of sausage and rice. “You should have some.”

 

Leia laughed and sat down. “I already did. Are the others gone yet?”

 

Ben nodded, swallowing. She sighed.

 

“I hate this part. Waiting. That’s the worst thing about your father. I’m always waiting for him to come home.”

 

Shifting in his seat, Ben shoveled in another forkful. It tasted exactly as he remembered, savory and spicy and just a little bit sweet.

 

“Don’t you make me wait, Benjamin Organa,” she said quietly. “I’ve already waited for sixteen years, so you’d better come home. You hear me?”

 

Ben looked at her and nodded.

 

When he finished his meal, he got up and got himself some more.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 


	15. The Battle

**The Battle**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Ben lay on his little bed and closed his eyes. A few deep breaths, and—

 

“ _Benjamin Organa,_ ” the King’s voice boomed. “The _traitor_ returns.”

 

Clenching his jaw tight, Ben looked up. The Faerie Court was in chaos, the dancers huddled together behind the throne, staring at him with wide gem eyes. There were fissures in the floor and the silver bowl Ben sometimes saw the King with was embedded in one wall, like a coin in an egg. Half the white oval lights scattered over the walls had gone red and the others burned with a flickering intensity, like the heart of a wildfire.

 

“You dare,” the King growled, his hands gripping the throne so tightly the stone cracked. “You, a pathetic _mortal_ , little more than an _insect_. I raised you up!” The King snapped his arm up, clenching his hand into a fist. “And I will _cast you down_ , to such depths of hell never dreamed of by simple Christian minds. You will know such suffering as no creature has ever endured, and when I am finished with you you will _beg_ for something as sweet as pain.”

 

The sound of the King’s voice crackled in Ben’s chest like the boom of nearby lightning. It ached, physically _ached_ , as if his bones were being shaken apart, one word at a time. He swallowed hard and refused to be blink.

 

“Do it, then,” he called.

 

The King stared at him with empty black eyes. “What?”

 

“Do it.” Ben held out his arms. “Stop talking about it and _do_ it. Or are you too afraid?”

 

 _“Afraid_?” the King snarled, sitting back in his throne and looking down at Ben as if he were something crawled out from under a rock. “You think I _fear you_? _You,_ a—”

 

“Pathetic mortal, I know,” Ben shouted. “I heard you the first time.”

 

The King’s lips drew back to reveal sharp, too-white teeth and he sat forward, the lights dimming and shifting so he cast a shadow that fell over Ben like night. “Watch your tongue, worm.”

 

“Why should I?” Ben asked. “You’re already going to make me beg for something as sweet as pain. What more do I have to lose?”

 

The King raised a hand towards the hallway and the room beyond. Ben’s heart pounded in his chest. There was a thunderous crash, the doors smashed inward and Fox’s body flew through the air as if thrown by an explosion, snapping to a stop in the air beside the King’s throne, his limbs wavering and limp.

 

“He will share in your misery,” the King spat, “only his will last for _centuries_. A hundred generations will pass and he shall still scream, long after you rot away into the mud you are. Civilizations will be born and die, dynasties will fall, the stars will change and still, he will wail, cursing your name with every blood-filled breath. He will—

 

“He’s not doing anything,” Ben said. “He’s dead.”

 

The King growled, dark amusement distorting his scarred face. With a wave of his hand, he brought Hux before him, lying on his back as if there were a rope hooked into his ribcage.

 

“He yet lives,” the King said, holding his hand over Hux’s throat. “ _Behold_.”

 

 _Yes_ , Ben thought, and held back a grin.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The shard tore its way out of Hux’s throat and if he’d had breath in his lungs, he would have screamed. Sensation returned to his body all at once, a terrible wave of agony as every facsimile of a nerve fired in synchrony. His heart spasmed in his chest, struggling to pump blood that had pooled in his back and sat stagnant for days, refilling his drained arteries and veins with poison that only began to clear once the muscles in his chest convulsed and crushed the old air out of his lungs, the new rushing in in a choked gasp that left his head spinning. The King dropped him and he hit the stairs hard, rolling and tumbling down, new flares of agony sprouting up wherever he hit the sharp-edged rock.

 

Finally, he lay on his back on the cracked black marble, breathing fast and hard, trembling as his body jerked back to life like a frog in electricity. Wren rushed to his side, leaning over him, cupping his face.

 

“Fox,” he whispered tenderly, brushing the tears from his cheeks with a burning thumb. “Are you alright?”

 

Before Hux could summon the breath to reply, a new wave of agony crested over him, fresh and sharp, as if his skin were being peeled away and replaced by fire. His back arched and he clawed at the floor with his hands and feet both, anything to escape the torment, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere that was not _this_ , and his body wouldn’t obey him in any case, his muscles seizing as the pain went on, and on, and on.

 

He was aware, only dimly, that he was screaming.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Fox thrashed and jerked in his arms like a thing possessed, screaming and screaming until his voice tore and screaming still. Ben felt sick, clutching Fox as well as he could, fear and hate and brilliant, burning rage flaring in his gut.

 

“Stop!” he snapped at the King, raising his voice above Fox’s shredded wail. “Now!”

 

“Foolish child,” the King sneered, turning his wrist and sending Fox into an even stronger paroxysm of agony. “ _You_ cannot command _me_.”

 

Ben set Fox down and stood, his hands curled into fists at his sides. “ _Yes,_ I _can. I know your name._ ”

 

The King’s fingers flared and Fox’s screaming stopped.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The pain vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and Hux was left curled in on himself, gasping, his throat raw and his muscles sore.

 

“Impossible,” he heard the King say.

 

“You know it isn’t,” Wren replied, his voice strong and angry, a gleaming beacon in the aching night. “The Earth remembers. And if you don’t give me what I want, so will everyone else.”

 

Carefully, wincing with every movement, Hux sat up. Never had he seen the King so still. It was as if he’d traded flesh for stone, frozen his form in marble like the throne he sat upon.

 

“That’s your power, isn’t it,” Wren continued. “You know everyone else’s name, but none of them know yours. Why don’t we even the playing field? See how long they’ll let you be king when they can command you back.”

 

“ _You lie_ ,” the King growled. Stone cracked and crumbled under his hands. “I am the _King_. Only _I_ may command the Fay.”

 

“Nettle,” Wren called, turning his face towards the crowd gathered behind the throne without taking his eyes from the King’s. “How did I learn Fox’s true name?”

 

There was a gentle stirring and Bazine came forward, edging out hesitantly before gathering herself and striding out onto the dance floor to stand beside Wren, her chest heaving as she shouted out for all the others to hear.

 

“He commanded Mhera! He spoke the words of magic and Mhera had no choice! If a human can do it, why can’t we?”

 

A ripple went through the crowd and the King slammed his fist down on the arm of his throne so hard the entire side cracked away.

 

 _“ENOUGH!_ ” the King roared. “I have heard enough blasphemy. Any who stand against me will suffer the same fate as _them_.”

 

Wren stepped forward. “You’re afraid! You’re afraid of me and you’re afraid of—”

 

The King waved his hand and Wren went flying.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

His back hit the wall. Something snapped and as he fell to the marble he realized he couldn’t feel his legs. The fear he’d been fighting surged in his chest like an animal going in for the kill. _I’m going to die._

Fire flared, casting black shadows as a creature of flame twenty feet high leaped from Fox’s hands. The thing — a dog, a wolf, a fox — pounced on the King and knocked him backwards, the back of his throne shattering under his weight. The King batted it away but it reformed like smoke, snapping and tearing at his clothes. A thick black snake joined it, dripping inky venom from its fangs as they plunged into the King’s body again and again.

 

“ _Bazine!”_ the King snarled, tearing a wispy hole through the snake with one slash of his hand. “ _Hux! You will stop!”_

The two fairies staggered backwards as one and the flame creatures melted away, leaving the King tattered but unhurt, rage filling his empty eyes like thunderclouds. He slashed his hand again and they collapsed into shuddering shrieks.

 

“ _I AM THE KING!_ ” he boomed as Ben struggled to sit up, spinning to look at the others gathered behind him.

 

A tiny woman with wispy white hair and small blue-black eyes stepped forward. “Not anymore.”

 

The room erupted into magic; a giant black and blue frog barreled into the King and knocked him from the top of the pyramid, and a gleaming white eagle tore long gashes in his coat with its great hooked claws, and a golden beagle eight feet long savaged his leg. He shouted names — _MAZ, TEKKA, CONNIX!_ — but even as the first three animals vanished a green horse trampled him down onto the marble and a crimson tiger ripped the back of his coat off completely and a spider the color of old blood sunk pinching fangs into the back of his neck. This was going better than Ben had ever hoped to dream —

 

The King arched his back and opened his mouth and produced a sound Ben could only compare to the trumpets of hell he’d heard when he set the hill free, but deeper, darker, a sound that was the roar of fire and the growl of a beast and the snarl of a mountain amplified a thousand times. Ben clapped his hands to his ears but it didn’t matter, the sound thrummed through him like waves through a pond, stopping his heart and freezing his lungs in his chest. Every fairy in the room dropped to their knees, wailing silently into the din.

 

It stopped the way a landslide stopped, rumbling away and leaving Ben’s ears ringing. For a while the world seemed silent as, like a lion rising from its slumber, the King stood. The tattered clothes slid from his body like water, dissolving into black sand and leaving him naked. It should have made him seem more vulnerable, but it didn’t; it only made him more monstrous. His body was lean and pale like the flesh of a fish who had never known the sun, sagging in places and pulled so taut in others stretch marks rippled through his skin like lightning. The bones of his spine protruded through his skin like skeletal horns and there were sharp raised ridges on his shoulders and hips. Between his legs was nothing, a smooth sexless plane with the faintest hint of a slit, like the underbelly of a crocodile. He’d grown, somehow, grown so those around him were not children, but infants, the kneeling forms of the fairies barely reaching the top of his ankles.

 

He said nothing. His eyes were sunken pits, scanning slowly around the room. The fairies trembled, heads bowed, some pressing their palms together and raising their hands to their foreheads in a facsimile of prayer. Ben could see some of their mouths moving, but heard nothing.

 

Circling all the way around, the King looked down on him, on them, Fox and Nettle struggling to stand up as much as Ben was. Fox managed it, just barely, standing on shaky feet and edging over to put himself between the King and Ben. Ben loved him in that moment, loved him so fiercely his chest ached.

 

The King waved his hand and Hux flew sideways, smashing into the wall and falling in a cascade of broken marble. The King looked at Ben and took a step forward.

 

“ _SNOKE!_ ” Ben shouted, with everything he had, though he could barely hear his own voice. “ _DIE!”_

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The King paused. Wren said a name and the King paused. His vertebrae rippled in a pulsing shiver and for a moment, Hux thought—

 

Then the King laughed, a deep ugly boom that rattled Hux’s broken bones and kept him from healing, redoing the damage even as he repaired it.

 

“A name is nothing,” the King said, reaching down and picking Wren up like a doll, “without the will to use it. You are _weak_. All of you, _weak_.”

 

He cast Wren aside, Wren’s body hitting the wall again with a terrible crack. When he fell to the floor, he was still, unmoving, flecks of broken marble in his hair. Ignoring the shattered ribs spearing into his lungs, Hux began to crawl towards him. Wren had to live. No matter what happened to Hux, _Wren had to live_.

 

“Look at you,” the King sneered, staring down at his people with open disgust. “You are _nothing_. Mice kneeling before a god. I have been _so very generous_. I have allowed you your whispers. I have allowed you your _schemes_. I have allowed you bargainers, after _three hundred years.”_

The King turned again and thrust a clawed finger in the direction of Wren’s broken body, glaring down at Hux with an abiding rage in his eyes that froze Hux where he lay.

 

“I _gave him to you,_ ” the King snarled. “All that you have, you owe to _me_.”

 

The King’s hand cut to the side and Hux found himself ripped away, sent tumbling and rolling across the floor away from Wren, his nails tearing from their beds as he clawed uselessly at the broken floor.

 

“And now,” the King said, stretching out one massive foot to crush Wren like an insect beneath his heel. “I take it awa—”

 

“SNOKE!” A man’s voice — _Tuwanae’s voice_ — shouted from the crowd. “ _DIE!_ ”

 

The King twitched as if shocked, his foot coming away as he stepped back to keep his balance. His lip curled and he spun, raising his hand—

 

“Snoke!” Maz called. “ _Die!_ ”

 

“Snoke!” Tekka now, and Tabala, shouting together, “ _Die!_ ”

 

The King thrashed and hissed like the snow of an avalanche, waving his hand and sending a wave of fairies flying. Other voices called out — Vaako, through his clenched teeth, and Connix in her high fearful voice, and Asuum, each syllable carefully barked, and _Plutt_ , louder than all the rest. Hux began to crawl again.

 

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

 

“I have him,” Reed whispered, then in a crouch ran across the dance floor to where Wren lay.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- -—

 

Warmth washed over him, and Ben coughed, tasting the hot copper of blood. A hand pressed against his mouth.

 

“Hush,” Reed said, his other hand emanating heat through Ben’s chest and soothing the pain away. “It’s working.”

 

Ben could feel his legs again, and for a moment he was so happy that he didn’t understand what Reed had said. Then he heard a great bellow and looked up. The King clawed at the air like a man tormented by a million stinging flies, hissing and stumbling, his head and shoulders slamming into the upper reaches of the slanted walls. He seemed smaller than he had a moment ago. Ben swallowed hard and tried to sit up, but Reed kept him down, whispering, “I’m not done yet, stay put.”

 

The others stood in a line strung between him and Fox, guarding them both as they shouted, “Snoke, _die_!” Phasma had run to Nettle’s side, her arm wrapped protectively around Nettle’s slender shoulders while Nettle’s clung to Phasma’s thick waist. There were so many voices, voices he recognized and voices he didn’t — Rey’s, a high clear voice like a child, a deep trilling one that reminded him of his Uncle Chewie, a booming one like the laughter of a giant — all shouting the same thing. Ben added his voice to the din, coughing again, though this time the blood stayed down.

 

“Snoke, _die!_ ” Poddleton bellowed, his voice fierce and strong. Ben could feel the magic in it and wondered, wondered at all of them, wondered that they were here and that this was happening and that this was _working_ , Rey and Poe and Phasma and his uncle, Gaius and Ozymandias who had hated him, Mitaka the meek and snappy Isis and even Silver, Silver the silent, who’s voice he had never heard, now calling out two words over and over like the ringing of a bell. The King was twenty feet tall, fifteen, ten.

 

 

“I love you,” Fox whispered into Ben’s ear. It was the first time he’d ever said it in words.

 

Ben kissed him. He tasted like strawberries and gold.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

When the King was the size of a man, the chorus petered out, fairies and magicians alike standing in a circle around him. He seemed a pathetic thing, suddenly, skeletal and hunched and trembling, cringing from everyone he saw like a beaten animal. His eyes weren’t pits; just black orbs, flecked with shards of white, more like scattered dust than stars. For the first time in Hux’s memory, he looked desperately afraid.

 

“Stop,” he rasped, just a voice, small and shaking. “Stop, all of you. How dare you. I am your _King_.”

 

“You _were_ our King,” Plutt said with a fleshy huff. “That looks to be changing soon.”

 

“There will be no more bargainers,” the King — Snoke — growled. “The worlds are drifting apart, without me you will _never_ see the human world again. You _need_ me.”

 

“Not really,” Mitaka said with a shrug. “We found your little door to the Kingsroads. Wonderful hiding place, by the way. Beneath the ocean, very clever.”

 

“You’re finished, _Snoke_ ,” Bazine barked, her arm still tight around Phasma’s waist. “Might as well give up now.”

 

His lip quivered, part snarl and part wince.

 

“I am your King,” he said again, almost a squeak. “I have always been your King.”

 

“No,” Maz said, parting the crowd. “You have not.”

 

She held something in her hands, carefully, gingerly, black and flat like a razor-edged arrowhead. The shard. As she cut across the little circle in the center of the gathered fairies, Snoke skittered away from her, almost stumbling into Raziya’s hulking form in the process.

 

Maz stopped in front of Hux. Held the shard up.

 

“It is yours,” she said somberly. “Do with it what you will.”

 

Hux took it from her. It wasn’t cold, or warm, or heavy, or light; it felt like he was holding nothing, a shadow. A little piece of the world beyond the sky. He shivered.

 

Then he looked up at Snoke and grinned.

 

Snoke stumbled backwards, away from him, eyes wide like two black stones set into his face. Tuwanae grabbed his left arm, Vaako his right, holding him still even as he struggled like a rabbit caught in a net, or a slug dropped on a fire. Hux sauntered towards him, remembering keenly that day long ago, when the King-to-be had reached into Vaako’s throat and yanked out his tongue. Vaako was remembering too, Hux could see, a cruel smile playing on his thin pale lips.

 

Standing in front of Snoke, Hux looked down at the shard in his hand, turning it and watching the light vanish inside it like a hole in the world.

 

“Did you know, I used to admire you?” he said, almost absently. “I thought you were clever and strong and wise. I thought you knew who I was. But you didn’t.”

 

He slid the shard forward in his palm and traced the tip along Snoke’s working throat, drawing a thin line of blood that was golden red, just like Hux’s own.

 

“You didn’t know any of us. You didn’t know _anything_. You were just making it up as you went along. And the truly _disappointing_ thing is, it wasn’t even good. You told Wren to be a wolf, to be strong, but you forgot what makes wolves strong in the first place.” Hux pressed the shard into Snoke’s skin, just enough that his breath began to wheeze. “They come in packs.”

 

The shard thrust home. Snoke stiffened, his eyes wide and terrified like a deer with jagged jaws snapping at its hooves. Then he went limp.

 

Wren came up to stand beside Hux, wrapping an arm around his waist.

 

“Snoke,” he said. “ _Die_.”

 

For a moment, nothing happened. Then he realized Snoke’s long, clawed fingers were going grey, skin and nail both, with more creeping up his feet. The stony color seeped up his limbs, crept down from the top of his head, working inward until there was only a pale, dim star of untouched flesh in the center of his chest, directly above his heart.

 

The star went out, and like a pillar of ash, Snoke fell apart.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

No-one spoke. Ben felt Hux shiver, a little cold thing that left tension in his shoulders. Ben drew him against his side and leaned down to press a kiss to the side of his head, tasting the gold of his blood.

 

Part of him wanted to celebrate. Part of him expected cheers and whoops, expected passionate, joyful kisses and hugs and merriment. But there was a pile of ash where a creature as old as time once had been, and if one fairy could die, so could they all. He felt like Cain, the first murderer, standing over Abel with a jawbone in his hand.

 

No-one seemed to know what to do. The fairies at the edge of the circle began to break off, some just wandering away while others vanished entirely, going who-knew-where. To the Kingsroads perhaps, or their Keeps, or just the world beyond the Court’s walls. Finn pushed past them to hug Rey fiercely, and Phasma scooped Nettle up in her arms and carried her off.

 

“Is that it?” a young woman with golden hair done up in twists on the side of her head asked, clinging to the arm of a tall white-haired man with stormy grey eyes. “Is it over?”

 

“Yes,” the old man said, looking down at the pale of ash. “I believe it is.”

 

“Who’s going to be King then?” a dark-skinned fairy woman with a crop of curly black hair that reminded him of Beebee asked, looking at Hux.

 

Before he opened his mouth, the little brown woman with the blue-black eyes who had been the first to speak against the King stepped forward.

 

“No-one. There shall be no King in Faerie. And if one wishes to rise…” She fixed Hux with a steady stare. “Then he shall have to earn it.”

 

Fox straightened a little. “Some would say he already has.”

 

“Some would say,” the little woman agreed. “Others would not. The matter will not be settled today.”

 

Fox paused for a moment, then inclined his head.

 

There was a dull murmur of conversation now, most of those remaining clumping into groups to whisper to one another as if the King might still be listening. Ozymandias, Isis and Gaius were involved in some kind of hushed argument — Ben caught ‘ _No, we are_ not _giving him a proper burial, are you_ mad?’ — and Finn was defending Rey from the advances of some kind of scowling goblin with pig eyes and no neck. Phasma and Nettle had completely disappeared and Luke was deep in conversation with Poddleton, the young soldier nodding furiously at whatever Luke was saying.

 

Poe had tucked himself into one of the shallow corners where two sloping walls met, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes flicking between his own feet and the shifting crowd. In all this time, Ben had never seen him look uncomfortable. It didn’t suit him.

 

“Fox,” Ben murmured, “Stay here for a minute, will you?”

 

“What?” Fox blinked, looking up at him, then immediately scowling. “Why? What are you doing?”

 

“I have to talk to someone.”

 

“What, in secret?”

 

Ben huffed a laugh into Fox’s hair. “You can listen in if you want to. Just don’t let him know you’re doing it. I don’t think he likes you very much.”

 

Fox’s scowl softened into something closer to a pout and he slid his arms around Ben’s waist. “I don’t want you to go.”

 

“I know,” Ben sighed. “Five minutes.”

 

Fox nodded, then, after a long moment, released him.

 

Poe looked up as Ben approached, hugging himself a little closer and bowing his head. Ben wasn’t sure what to say, so he didn’t say anything, leaning up against the wall next to him and staring out at the crowd. He was fairly certain he knew what this was about.

 

Eventually, Poe sighed and confirmed his suspicions. “He’s here somewhere. Isn’t he?”

 

“Some of them left,” Ben replied, crossing his own arms over his chest. “Do you know his name?”

 

Poe nodded glumly. “Kes. After so long, I’m not even sure he’d remember—”

 

Ben cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Kes! Which one of you is Kes?”

 

In the relative quiet, his voice carried like a thunderclap, everyone in the room turning to stare at them. Poe’s shoulders hunched up around his ears and he looked like he wanted to merge back into the rock, his cheeks darkening. Ben repressed a smile.

 

There was a gentle commotion in the crowd, and then it parted to let through a man. Ben recognized him instantly. He hadn’t changed since the sparking of Poe’s old memory, except perhaps in clothing, and in that respect he’d only grown more similar to his son; they both wore brown waistcoats and short jackets, with orange cravats and pale cream shirts beneath. Kes’ jacket was flecked with marble dust and there was a tiny trickle of red-gold blood coming from one of his ears. As he stepped out, he saw Poe and stopped, lips parting.

 

“Poe?” he said, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “Is that…?”

 

Poe’s eyes widened. He stayed where he was, frozen, until Ben grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him forward.

 

“Make it right,” Ben told him when Poe fixed him with a wide-eyed glare.

 

“Poe?” Kes said again, quieter, coming closer step by uncertain step. Then, he came all at once, wrapping Poe in his arms and lifting him off the ground, spinning him around like a child. Poe made an undignified squeak and Kes laughed. “Poe! Look at you! You’re all grown up! _Stars_ , do you look like your mother. Let me look at you, let me see—”

 

Ben slipped away then, putting his hands in his pockets and finally letting himself smile. Kes fawned over Poe like a mother hen, both of them laughing and crying at the same time, hugging each other over and over. As Ben passed Rey, she looked at him and smiled, reaching out to squeeze his hand. He squeezed hers back.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Hux’s attention was so focused on Wren he didn’t even notice the old man walking up to him until he spoke.

 

“So,” the bearded man Hux recognized immediately as Wren’s old master said, his hands folded inside his wide sleeves, “you’re Fox. You’re taller than I thought you’d be.”

 

Vainly, Hux drew himself up, looking down to brush dust from his currently crimson sleeve. “Come to threaten me, have you?”

 

“No,” Luke said completely humorlessly. “Ben would never forgive me. He loves you, for reasons I will likely never comprehend. There is, however, something I would like to say.”

 

He seemed to be waiting for a response, standing there staring at Hux until an awkward tension had worked its way down Hux’s spine and he gave in to the unrelenting pressure of the man’s blue eyes.

 

“Well, then?” he snapped. “Get on with it.”

 

Luke stared at him a moment longer, then gave a weary sigh. “I have spent the last sixteen years striving to correct a mistake I never should have made. Even before Ben was born, I saw a great future for him; great, and terrible, if he wandered down the wrong path. I did everything I could to make sure that wouldn’t happen. But I was so concerned with the man who _could_ be, that I forgot the boy who _was_. I never asked what he wanted. I never listened when he told me. And in so doing I drove him right to you. I will never forgive myself for that.”

 

Stepping closer, Luke put a hand on Hux’s shoulder. The look he fixed him with was piercing, threads of anger and sadness and regret twined around a cord of warning.

 

“Whatever you do,” he said quietly, “don’t make my mistake.”

 

Hux bristled, lip curling to tell this man, _how dare you, I would never, I love him more than you ever did you fat old coot_. Then he glanced up and saw Wren holding the girl’s hand, and a stab went through him. Perhaps the advice wasn’t _entirely_ without merit.

 

Wren let go over her hand and came over to him, smiling when he met Hux’s gaze and smiling wider when he realized who he was talking to. Luke let the hand drop from Hux’s shoulder and returned Ben’s smile, though Luke’s didn’t quite thaw the lingering sadness in his eyes.

 

“Ben,” he said. “You did well today. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go tell Leia what happened. She shouldn’t have to worry any longer than she needs to.”

 

Wren nodded. Then, as Luke turned to walk away, he stepped forward.

 

“Uncle Luke,” he said, his voice a little strange. “Thank you.”

 

This time, when Luke smiled, it shone all the way through, if only barely. “You’re welcome.”

 

When he was gone, Hux slipped his hand into Wren’s and turned to nose into his shoulder. He smelled of blood and sweat and dust, the tip of the knife that was death, stabbing sharp into Hux’s mind with memories of Wren broken, bleeding, of being unable to protect him as he always promised he would. A thought and they were both clean again, the chips of black in Wren’s hair and the blood soaked into his clothes from where a dozen broken bones breached the skin vanishing in an instant.

 

“Wren,” Hux mumbled into the high collar of Wren’s jerkin. “My beautiful little bird. Perhaps I should have called you _Crow_ after all.”

 

“Is that where that comes from?” Wren chuckled. “I’ve always wondered.”

 

Thinking of the old man, thinking of the girl, Hux squeezed Wren’s hand. “Tell me what you want.”

 

Wren paused for a moment, his fingers playing up and down Hux’s back. “I don’t know. To go home, for a while, and then—”

 

“Sir?” Poddleton’s voice called out, high and trembling.

 

Hux looked over his shoulder.

 

There was light rising from the pile of ashes like smoke.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- -—

 

Ben shoved Fox behind him and Fox shoved Ben back, harder, stepping forward as he stumbled to put himself between Ben and harm’s way once again. Immediately the others were on their guard, gathering in a wide circle around the gathering light. It looked like misty ball lightning, little sparks flying off of it and wisping away. It reminded him of the sparks, the souls, but it was different seeing it through his eyes — he’d thought they were golden, and this was pure white.

 

The light hovered for a moment, seeming to spin this way and that as if looking around. It moved towards Fox — and then suddenly it _was_ Fox, a perfect copy, but for the eyes. The eyes were coal black and speckled with white.

 

Fox straightened and stepped back, brows furrowed in confusion. The copy mimicked his movement, his posture, even his expression, though there was something not quite right about it, like a drawing that didn’t quite resemble the real thing.

 

“What are you doing?” Fox snapped, his lips curling in a snarl.

 

“What are you doing?” the copy repeated, lifting its own lip, less the baring of teeth and more a half-mouthed smile.

 

Fox began to sidestep, pacing around the copy even as the copy in turn paced around him, the two of them spinning in ever-tightening circles. There was something jaunty, almost playful about the copy’s steps, a bounce where Fox’s steps were stomps.

 

“Stop copying me!” Fox bit. The copy repeated the words almost in sing-song, not exactly mocking; more like a child adding a melody to something, playing with the sounds they were making without any care for the content.

 

Frustrated, Fox surged forward and grabbed the copy around the neck, his nails digging deep into its skin. “ _Stop it._ ”

 

Ben thought it would laugh; instead its black eyes went wide and it began to struggle like a trapped animal, pawing at Fox’s arm and making high-pitched whining noises until Fox let it go, casting it away so hard it almost fell. Shrinking away from him, it backed straight into the goblin man, who shoved it, sending it toppling face-forward onto the broken marble floor. It flipped and scrambled, at first to stand up and then just to get away, to flee before all the furious faces and looming figures closing in on it, ready to strike it down if they had to. Realizing there was no way out, the copy drew its legs up to its chest, fisted its hands in its facsimile of Fox’s red hair, and began to rock.

 

“What’s going on?” Isis said slowly, looking around at the others as if they were any more informed than she was. “Is that… _thing_ Snoke?”

 

At the sound of the name, the copy looked up, like a foreigner in a crowd suddenly hearing a word in their own tongue. A chill went up Ben’s spine.

 

“Snoke!” Finn said. “ _Di—_ ”

 

Rey smacked him. “Don’t! Look at him, the poor thing’s afraid.”

 

“It’s a trick,” Ozymandias said dourly. “Has to be.”

 

“I agree,” the white-haired man with the grey eyes replied. “Best to be sure.”

 

“What if he comes back again?” the fairy with the golden spirals in her hair asked nervously. “What if this is how it works? A fairy dies and a new one takes their place.”

 

“It’s not a new one,” Kes argued, gesturing towards it as it peeked out from around its arms. “Look at its eyes.”

 

“Maybe it’s a reincarnation thing,” Poe said. “Same soul, different body.”

 

“We should kill it then,” said Isis, making a stabbing motion with one hand. “Find the shard, shove it through his spine. See how much trouble he can make _then_.”

 

Ben, thoughts turning over in his mind, slowly dipped into a crouch, tilting his head to the side as he examined the copy. It looked back at him. It didn’t _feel_ like Snoke. Certainly not the monstrous King, but not the man they had killed, either. The King had been a hole in the world, the man a cracked vase barely holding together. This was a rabbit, a child, trapped and spooked and helpless.

 

“Who are you?” he asked it, trying to gentle his voice a touch. It blinked at him, but didn’t respond. Glancing up at Poe, Ben tried again, in the Old Tongue.

 

The copy’s black eyes went wide and it flipped, skittering towards him on its knees. Fox raised his hands to blast it back, but Ben touched his hip, gesturing _wait_.

 

“ _I don’t know,_ ” the copy said in a rush. “ _Do you know? Why is everyone angry with me? What did I do? Am I bad?_ ”

 

Taken aback by the stream of questions, Ben leaned back, looking around at the others for some kind of guidance. They just stared back, with the exception of Poe, who shrugged. _You started this_ , the group seemed to be saying. _This is your party now._

“ _You don’t remember?_ ” Ben asked cautiously.

 

“ _I remember waking up,_ ” it replied. “ _I remember taking a face. Was taking a face bad? Everyone else has faces. Do you want me to change it?”_

Before Ben could respond, the copy shifted again, going from Hux’s mirror image to Ben’s and then shifting into something in between; a young man with long auburn hair, sharp cheekbones and full lips and slender limbs, his clothing silver-grey instead of black or white. Ben recognized him in the same way he had recognized Kes, seeing himself, seeing Hux, mixed together to create someone new. _This is what our child would look like_ , he found himself thinking. He brought his hand to his mouth.

 

“ _Is this better?_ ” the copy — the man — asked in a voice that had Ben’s depth and Fox’s sharpness. “ _I didn’t mean to do something bad. Please don’t be angry with me._ ”

 

“ _We’re not angry with you,_ ” Rey said, also dropping into a crouch even as Finn flailed for her to keep away. “ _You really don’t remember what happened before?_ ”

 

“ _There was no before_ ,” the man replied. “ _Where am I?_ ”

 

“ _You’re in the Faerie Court_ ,” Poe told it. “Just checking; you really don’t understand English, right?”

 

“ _What’s the Faerie Court?”_ the man asked.

 

“Right,” Poe said in English. “What should we tell this guy? I’m guessing ‘You’re the King’ is out.”

 

“Please,” Fox sneered. “You don’t actually _believe_ him, do you? It’s a trick. Some silly, pathetic attempt at survival. Ornella is right. We should find the shard and end this before it gets out of hand.”

 

Ben looked at the man who could have been his son and said, “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Isis asked. “Of course it matters. If he gets in power again—”

 

“Look at him,” Ben cut in, gesturing to the man watching the proceedings with oblivious interest. “He doesn’t have any _power_. If he did, he wouldn’t be doing this. Either it’s a trick, and he’s too weak to hurt anyone, or it’s real, and he’s too weak to hurt anyone. It doesn’t matter.”

 

“So we just let him wander freely?” Fox snapped, making the man flinch again. “After what he did to us?”

 

“We’ll watch him,” Ben said. “Make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone. And if it looks like it _is_ a trick, then we re-evaluate. But for now, we can’t know one way or the other. If we hurt him now, we’d be punishing an innocent person for something he had no part in.”

 

“He isn’t innocent!” Fox shouted, beginning to pace again, short sharp steps the man skittered away from like a frightened cat. “He almost killed you! Do you have _any idea_ how close you came to dying? How close I came to losing you? He was going to kill you and there was nothing I could do and you’re just going to _let him go_?”

 

Ben stood, staring with the others as Fox cut back and forth, back and forth. Then Ben held out his arms and Fox came into them, clutching him tightly as Ben smoothed his hands up and down Fox’s back. He could feel Fox breathing, fast and hard, feel his heart pattering in his chest. Ben pressed a kiss to the side of his head.

 

“I’m fine,” he murmured, hugging Fox tight. “Thank you for protecting me.”

 

Fox sagged in his arms.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

They walked away. Hux had had enough of Snoke, enough of the Court, enough of all of it. He whispered into Wren’s shoulder, “Let’s go home,” and Wren nodded and without another word to the others they walked away. Someone else could deal with whatever that _thing_ was that had taken his face.

 

Hux took them back to Starkiller Keep. A handful of fairies milled about the dance floor, those who had returned from the Court talking excitedly to those who had never left, who’d been lucky and cowardly enough to remain despite the King’s arrival. Hux couldn’t look at any of them. They all expected something — an explanation, a speech, a declaration of kingship. Those things could all come later. For now, Hux was far, far too tired.

 

Part of him — after the last time they were alone — expected them to fall into bed immediately. And they did; fully clothed, arms wrapped around each other, laying for a long while in silence as they breathed each other in.

 

“I missed you,” Hux breathed after half an age.

 

“I missed you too,” Wren replied with a smile. “One night isn’t enough.”

 

“It’s never enough,” Hux whispered. “Tell me everything. Every minute of it. I want to know it all.”

 

Ben threaded his hand through Hux’s hair, took a deep breath, and began.


	16. The Beginning

**The Beginning**

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Poe, Finn and Beebee were playing tag. Beebee was winning, by an astounding margin.

 

Ben sat on the roof of the stable, Rey on one side of him and Fox on the other. It felt like a minor miracle, owing in large part, Ben believed, to the conversation they’d had in his old bedroom that morning.

 

“Don’t make trouble,” Ben had begged, his hands on Fox’s hips and their foreheads pressed together. “I want my mother to like you.”

 

Fox had hemmed and hawed, but, for reasons Ben didn’t quite understand, he appeared to be listening. Trying to, at least. He’d already ‘accidentally’ referred to Rey as ‘the whore’, and he still had a faint bruise on his jaw where she’d socked him.

 

Ben knew the peace wouldn’t last. Rey and Finn and him would have to go back to Russia, sooner rather than later — he had a promise to keep, after all — and even if he stayed, there would be a fight eventually. Luke was already talking about starting the school up again, this time including fairies — and how to kill them — in the curriculum. And Phasma, Mitaka, Ozymandias and Gaius had the revolution to go back to, though Gaius was loudly considering retiring in favor ‘more academic pursuits’. Ultimately the little family he’d managed to gather together would split apart and go their separate ways.

 

 _Shame about the ending,_ Ben thought, watching Finn collapse dramatically into the grass as a giggling Beebee shoved at his leg, _but the middle is worth the heartache._

“What are you going to do now?” he asked Rey quietly. “After Russia, I mean.”

 

She paused for a moment, drawing her knees a little closer to her chest. “I’m not sure. It depends, I suppose. What about you?”

 

“I don’t know either,” Ben admitted. He’d thought about it a lot, since Fox had asked him what he wanted, but he was no closer to an answer. “I’ve been thinking… find my father, maybe. After that, I have no idea.”

 

“That’s a good idea,” Rey said, leaning back on her hands. “I would like to do the same, eventually. I have so many questions. Why did they leave me? Where did they go? Why didn’t they come back? I’d have done it already, it’s just…”

 

“You’re afraid of what will happen when you do,” Ben finished for her. She nodded.

 

As silence fell again, Fox reached over and took Ben’s hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing gently. Ben glanced at him, taking in the way the warmth of the dying sun soaked into his pale skin, so different from the hard white light of the Court. This was where he belonged. Where they both belonged. Somewhere with sunsets and trees and dragonflies zipping to and fro.

 

“You could stay here, you know,” Rey said softly, perhaps reading the longing in his expression. “I’m sure Leia would be happy to have you.”

 

She would, Ben knew. She’d already said as much — ‘ _Things are going to get harder once you’re gone. We could use another magician around. Oh well.’_ — but Ben wasn’t sure. He looked at Fox, chewed the inside of his cheek. Fox looked back, ran his thumb over Ben’s knuckles, sighed.

 

“If it’s what you really want, I won’t argue,” the fairy said, giving an uncharacteristic shrug. “I’m sure I can find _something_ to occupy myself. Perhaps I should take up knitting.”

 

Ben huffed a laugh and shook his head, smiling as Fox brought Ben’s hand to his lips. He could see it suddenly, years going by, walking through crunching autumn leaves and drifts of late winter snow, helping his mother with the runaways, pushing someone on the crooked swing and showing them all the wonders he’d found wandering the woods as a child. No more crowns, no more palaces, no more thrones. Just a life, surrounded by the people he loved.

 

He glanced over his shoulder at his house. At the kitchen with the too-short counter and the bedroom full of furniture that was too small. Eventually, he took a deep breath and shook his head.

 

“No. I tried hiding once. You know how that turned out.”

 

Rey slowly nodded. Ben wondered if she really understood, what it was like to want something you knew would never be enough. To want something simple, something pure, even though when you had it you were miserable. Nostalgia for a past that had never been.

 

 _Besides,_ he thought, _I have an old man to make up for_.

 

Silence fell again. Finn and Poe had given up running and now stood as a pair of laughing trees for Beebee to climb, lifting her up in the air and spinning her around and then letting her clamber from one set of shoulders to another a little bird hopping from one branch to the next.

 

“I could help,” Ben said suddenly, a thought forming in his mind even as he said the words. “ _We_ could help. Give the slaves somewhere to go no slave-catcher on Earth would ever dare follow.”

 

“Our little colony could use more immigrants,” Fox mused. “Assuming the traitors will still have us.” Ben shot him a look and Fox rolled his eyes. “Oh, _so_ sorry, assuming the _perfectly reasonable people who ousted you from your own revolution_ will still have us, my mistake.”

 

“You really think your mother would stand for that?” Rey asked, a hardness in her voice. “That Poe and I would stand for that? All they’d be doing was trading one kind of slavery for another.”

 

“They aren’t slaves,” Fox retorted with the kind of pedantic tone he sometimes took when he knew he was wrong. “They come of their own free will.”

 

“And then you ensorcel them,” Rey said, visibly angry now, her hands curled into fists against the roof. “Poe told me what you’ve been doing. ‘Making people better’? It isn’t right.”

 

“And letting people rape and murder and steal is?” Fox countered. “Oh, of course, I forgot, you’re _Australian._ ”

 

“ _Fox_ ,” Ben warned, the fairy’s angled jaw snapping shut immediately. Rey glared at him, then fixed Ben with a kind of expectant look, waiting for him to speak. After a long while, he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “She’s right, Fox. What’s the difference between us commanding our people and the King commanding his?”

 

“You can’t be serious,” Fox said. “The two of you are nothing at all alike. He was a _monster_.”

 

“So was I,” Ben retorted, his nails digging into his palms. “Almost. Maybe I still am, underneath. If I go back to Iceland, it has to be for the right reasons. Not to make you happy, not to have a kingdom I never wanted in the first place, but because it’s the right thing to do. Because the revolution would never have taken off if people didn’t need it. People lit candles in their windows and wore feathers in their hats and they came for us to take them away because they needed somewhere to go. They needed a way out. And they deserve better than, than _magic_ in their heads.”

 

Fox said nothing, but squeezed his hand. Ben wasn’t sure he understood — Fox never really had — but he seemed to be willing to accept. _If it’s what you really want, I won’t argue._ Whatever Uncle Luke had said to him had sunk home.

 

Ben didn’t know what he was going to do. Didn’t really know where he was going to go, or what was going to happen. There were so many things up in the air, so many things that hadn’t been decided. For the first time in his life, he felt as if… as if he’d been walking along a road, and suddenly it was gone, and he stood in the middle of a field with the world all around him and there were no paths, no signs, just a vast untouched wilderness stretching on in every direction. Like he’d been plodding along with his eyes on the cobblestones and suddenly looked up to find there was nothing but horizon, nothing before him but an endless _something_ that could be _anything_ , if he only walked the right way.

 

For now, though, none of that mattered. That was tomorrow. For today, there was laughter in the air, and Fox’s hand in his, and the distant smell of Pio and Poddleton cooking in the kitchen; Ozymandias sitting by the duck pond while Isis chased dragonflies; Gaius sleeping under a tree, Silver perched in the branches with birds peeping in their hands; Phasma and Nettle and Mitaka and Reed sitting in the pasture, Nettle in Phasma’s lamp and Mitaka in Reed’s; Luke and Artoo in front of the bunkhouse, talking quietly and smiling to each other as only old friends could; his mother leaning against the doorway of the white house, watching over them all. Little wisps of white clouds glowing gold in the reddening sky and Virginia bluebells growing by the side of the road.

 

Ben smiled.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The tavern was a dingy place, a squat one story building with odd corners and a handful of out-of-place domes, as if it aspired to the grandeur of Constantinople or Rome. To Hux, it looked like the kind of place where one might leave one limb shorter than one went in. Wren looked at it like it was home. An uneasy home he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to, but home none the less.

 

They stood outside for a long, long while. Long enough for the gritty snow blowing over the sparse, rocky earth to stick to their pant legs and gather in their hair. Long enough that even Hux began to despise the chill. Wren tucked his hands up under his armpits and stamped his feet, staring at the darkly stained wooden door.

 

“You know,” Hux ventured after an hour had passed, “we don’t have to go in. We could just… leave.”

 

He did not approve of this particular venture. He disliked anything that caused Wren pain, and Han Solo was a branding iron. Still, Wren insisted on grasping it, telling him again and again he ‘had to make it right’ before he undertook some other task, though what that task was, Hux had little idea. Wren seemed to have something specific in mind, but when asked, he would simply shrug, the faintest hint of color rising to his cheeks. It was that, more than anything, that weighed heavy on Hux’s mind. It twigged the part of his mind that did not like Rey.

 

“We’re not going to leave,” Wren grumbled, stamping his feet again. “Just… Give me a minute.”

 

“I’ve given you many,” Hux retorted. “Either you want to see the man or you don’t. If you don’t, then lets get out of this bloody chill.”

 

Wren stared at the door. His teeth worried at the inside of his cheek. Hux wanted to point out how absurd this was, that Wren should be so afraid of a mere mortal when he had taken down the King, but Wren had always been bashful and brave at once. Hux put a hand on his shoulder.

 

“We could be back in Virginia in a heartbeat. Or we could return to Iceland. I’m sure Poddleton cooks a fantastic Christmas pudding.”

 

“Do you even know what Christmas pudding is?” Wren asked flatly.

 

“Fat, fruit, eggs and spices mashed up in a bag and left to rot for months,” Hux replied. “Why anyone would find such a thing appealing is utterly beyond me.”

 

“We’re not going to leave,” Wren repeated. “I have to ask him something before I… before I do anything else.”

 

“And what is this mysterious something?” Hux asked with a sigh, for what felt like the thousandth time. “Or shall that remain a secret until the sun dies and time sputters to an undignified end?”

 

Wren shifted on his feet and for a moment, Hux was sure he wouldn’t answer, would just shrug again or dodge the question. Then Wren took a deep, slow breath.

 

“I have to ask him if he meant it.”

 

Hux blinked at him and cocked his head. “Meant what?”

 

“The day I left for Uncle Luke’s, he…” Wren paused, jaw clenching. “He told me he didn’t want me, because of my magic. I need to know if it was true.”

 

Hux was severely tempted to flit in to the tavern and return with Han Solo’s head on a platter. He did not.

 

“I told you before, the weak are always jealous of the strong,” he said, folding his arms across his chest in an attempt to hide his clenched fists. “He’s nothing, a pathetic little man who happened to spawn greatness. What he thinks of you matters less than a cow’s flatulence in a hurricane. Put him behind you.”

 

“I don’t care what he thinks of me,” Wren snipped, then took another breath. “I do, a little. That’s not what this is about.”

 

Hux stepped around him to put himself between Wren and the tavern. “Enlighten me.”

 

“It’s…” Wren chewed on the inside of his cheek again. “You wouldn’t understand.”

 

“I’m ten thousand years old, you lump,” Hux replied, toeing Wren’s boot. “Of course I can understand.”

 

Wren fixed him with a dark look. “No, you can’t. You’ve never been a son.”

 

Wren had him there. There was a growing theory amongst the fairies that what had happened to Snoke — the dying, and the coming back, wide-eyed and new — had happened to all of them, long ago when memory failed even the wisest of them, so it was entirely possible that Hux had been a child, or the fairy equivalent therein. But he had never had a father, or a mother, or a family, not in the way Wren had. He sighed.

 

“Fine. Leave me in the dark. I’ll just stand here, worrying myself to death. It’s no trouble at all.”

 

“Fox,” Wren warned. Hux just shrugged.

 

Wren seemed torn for a long while, his jaw clenched, one of his hands slipping out from under his arm to grip his shoulder. He reminded Hux of the way he’d been the night they renewed their contract, frustrated and struggling for words. Hux didn’t push him this time. If Wren wanted to tell him, then he would tell him, and if he didn’t, then Hux would kiss him all the same, and wonder as they lay together what it was that Wren couldn’t say.

 

Eventually Wren swallowed.

 

“I have to know. I have to know if he meant it. I can’t find a way to say it that makes sense, but… I need to know why he said what he said so I can be sure _I’ll_ never say it. So I can do better than he did.”

 

“You’re right, that doesn’t make sense,” Hux said, cocking his head to the side. “Do _what_ better than he did? Be a better person? Because he’s a smuggler and a thief and you decided that of all the ways you could have taken over the world, you would give people food and shelter in exchange for literally nothing. I think you’re winning.”

 

He expected Wren to perk up, to smile at him. Instead, he looked back down at his feet. When he spoke, his voice was low, mumbled, the ruddy chill of his cheeks flaring.

 

“To be a better father.”

 

Hux blinked, sure he hadn’t heard him correctly, searching for other, more sensible things those mumbled syllables could signify.

 

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

 

“To be a better father,” Wren said again, louder, clearer. “I wasn’t going to bring it up until after.”

 

An intense, burning rage ignited in Hux’s stomach. He smiled to keep from snarling, nails pressing deep into his palms, hands shaking with the tension.

 

“When was it?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level and failing rather spectacularly. Wren cocked his head at him. “It was in Siberia, wasn’t it? When you tried to rescue her from prison, you _fucked_ her and now you have a brat on the way, _I told you I would kill you—_ ”

 

Wren laughed. A high, startled thing that tumbled down into his belly until he doubled over, one hand pressed to his mouth and the other clutching his stomach as if he’d been stabbed.

 

“ _It isn’t funny_ ,” Hux snapped, face burning, furious and hurt, deeper and deeper with every guffaw that came out of Wren’s mouth. “ _I trusted you,_ you pathetic little cheating—”

 

Wren straightened, put his hands on Hux’s shoulders, tears in his eyes and chuckles still bubbling up in his chest.

 

“I’m sorry,” he gulped. “It isn’t funny. I didn’t. I swear to God I didn’t.”

 

Hux stared at him for a long while, then threw out his arms. “Then what the _hell_ are you talking about?! Being a better father? _You have no children!_ ”

 

“No,” Wren said, almost gasping through a lopsided grin. “But I want some. With _you_.”

 

Hux’s mind stopped working.

 

“It’s possible, right?” Wren asked, gentler now that the laughter had stopped. “You could be a woman for a little while, if you want to. If you don’t, I understand. I just… We would make _beautiful_ babies, Hux, and we could give them the world, and then when I die you won’t be alone. Poe said a changeling can live for a thousand years. I just wanted to be sure I could do it right before I asked you. Please don’t be angry with me. I didn’t touch Rey, I swear.”

 

Hux blinked. “You… You want me to _have your children?_ ”

 

“If you want,” Wren repeated. “You don’t have to.”

 

“You…” Hux raised his hands as if he were about to throttle Wren, his fingers tensing in the air between them. “You are the _damnedest man_! Never do that to me again!”

 

“I won’t,” Wren promised, his hands sliding down Hux’s arms to twine their fingers together. “I love you.”

 

Hux took a deep, deep breath. “I love you too. My stupid, idiotic, horrible little bird.”

 

Wren grinned.

 

For a long while, they stood in silence, Hux’s heart slowly slowing to a normal beat. The cold didn’t seem so terrible, with Wren’s hands in his, Wren’s breath ghosting across his face. Then Wren tilted his head, pressing a kiss to Hux’s cheek before whispering into his ear.

 

 

“So? What do you think?”

 

“About… children?” Hux asked.

 

Wren nodded.

 

Hux didn’t know.

 

He’d never particularly liked children. They were messy, ignorant, boring little things, in his experience best left alone until they were old enough to be useful. But what Wren had said — _when I die, you won’t be alone —_ resonated deeply, ringing off a fear Hux had carried with him since the King.

 

Standing over that pile of ashes, he had realized something. He could _end_. He was not eternal, not immortal; all it took was his name and a single word, and he too could be reduced to ash. It was a terrifying thought. But it hadn’t terrified him.

 

Ever since he and Wren had made their vows, he’d been dreading the day when Wren slipped away into the dark, never to return. He knew, in the way one knew a high fall would kill, that losing Wren would break him. He could no longer imagine life without Wren as anything other than grim and purposeless, as it had been during those five long years when they were apart. He would wander the ruins forever, listless, lost, his ambitions dead and his heart broken, for an age and then another and then another, with no choice but to endure it.

 

The ashes gave him that choice.

 

But a child… a child would be something to live for. A piece of Wren lingering on, an obligation to keep him on his feet until the wound healed and he could breathe again, a _reason_ that would survive Wren for centuries to come. If the ashes were a siren, a child would be the ropes lashing him to the mast.

 

He did not know if he wanted that. He didn’t know if he _wanted_ a reason, or if it would even work. What if when the time came, it proved to be too much, and he did it anyway? What if he abandoned their child in his grief, or mistreated them without Wren’s guidance? What if he didn’t have the patience, the temperament, the kindness required to raise someone? What if he disappointed them, what if he hurt them, what if one day they found themselves standing in the cold outside a tavern working up the courage to ask him, ‘ _did you mean it’_? Could he take that chance?

 

“You don’t have to answer now,” Wren murmured, squeezing Hux’s hands. “I wasn’t even going to ask you yet. And I’m not even sure… With what I’ve done, what we’re _going_ to do, maybe it isn’t a good idea. Maybe we should wait. See what happens.”

 

Hux nodded. His stomach felt strange, tense and loose at once. He thought about Kes, rambling on about Poe to anyone who would listen, more animated than he had been in years. He thought about the little girl begging Wren to carry her on his shoulders, giggling and screeching as he lifted her high in the air, his molasses eyes glittering. He thought about Wren’s mother, hugging her son tightly and making him promise to come back soon. He thought about love, and what it left behind.

 

“I’m going to go in,” Wren said, stepping back a little and looking at the dark door. “You could come with me, if you want.”

 

“Of course I want to come with you,” Hux replied, releasing Wren’s hands to tug at the crimson waistcoat he’d donned as a reluctant concession to modern fashion. “I always want to come with you. I’d go with you anywhere, you know that.”

 

“I do,” Wren replied with a smile.

 

He slung his arm over Hux’s shoulders and together, they ambled towards the tavern.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The city was transformed. A grand Christmas tree decorated with many-colored witchlights grew in the center of the main square, sweeping boughs draped in strings of silver pearls and crystal birds in red and yellow and blue, singing tinkling carols in tiny glass voices. On top was no angel, but a shining star, bright enough to cast shadows across the black pavement. Ribbons of colored flags had been strung between the buildings and they fluttered in a steady warm breeze coming up from the sea. Garlands of living holly hung under roofs and everywhere there was the scent of cooking, meat and spices and bread and sweets mingled with the scent of pine and merry fires. The fairies might not have appreciated the Christ aspect of Christmas, but they certainly enjoyed a good holiday.

 

It felt strange to be here again. Part of Ben — a not insignificant part — had secretly hoped the revolution fell apart without him, but it hadn’t. It was flourishing. The vast greenhouses had been built, and more living space as well, most of the buildings now towering six or even seven stories high, with covered bridges of clear sapphire connecting them, as well as a network of tunnels deep underground like the tangled roots of a forest. There were long basalt weirs out into the water, some providing docks for ships that now came regularly, full of settlers and refugees and volunteers, while others roped in a deep section of ocean where fish were bred, provoked by enchantments in the water to grow to many times their normal size. Black holes opened into the mountains where one day, vast fields would grow and ripen under magical light, though now the tunnels were still shallow. Apparently, they would not need more farmland after all.

 

It was like nothing he ever could have imagined. Ben wondered, briefly, if this was how his parents had felt, after the war.

 

He and Fox wandered the snowy streets more or less at random, encountering only the occasional citizen who dared to brave the chill instead of detouring through the tunnels and bridges. Most were too hurried to do more than nod, on their way to Christmas dinners with family or newfound friends. A few offered smiles, cheeks cherries in the cold. Ben made sure to smile back, every single time.

 

Eventually they circled back around to the square with the tree and found a bench, Fox brushing off the snow with a wave. They sat down and stared up at the vaguely winking lights, twinkling like little stars strewn through the branches. Above them, the real stars were beginning to shine through, scattered clouds leaving long dark streaks in the gathering night.

 

Soon they would return to the compound. Poddleton and his new fairy — the golden haired girl he’d seen before, referred to by Poddleton as ‘Kaylee’ — had been working on their meal for days. He was using Pio’s recipes, he’d said, but ‘with a twist’, whatever that meant. Ben had never seen him so excited.

 

Mitaka had something planned, too, though he wasn’t sure what it was. Fireworks, he expected; he’d seen flashes of light from under Mitaka’s door and heard gentle booms through the wall of their new room, down in the officer’s quarters. Mitaka would be good at that sort of thing. He’d always been a little showy.

 

Ozymandias would not be partaking in the celebrations, he’d proclaimed on a number of occasions. He didn’t ‘believe’ in Christmas, thought it was a ‘tool of the establishment’ intended to keep the lower classes content. That he’d come from a noble family and been part of ‘the establishment’ for many years before defecting to Ben’s side seemed of little consequence to his new philosophy. Isis mocked him for it, but Ben couldn’t have cared less. Everyone deserved to reinvent themselves every once in a while.

 

Ben certainly was.

 

He wasn’t the ‘Raven King’ anymore. He wasn’t sure he ever had been. When Phasma told him he was only in it for the glory, she’d been right in spirit, if not in detail; he’d started the revolution for Fox, because Fox wanted him to be a king, because Fox was always talking about his destiny and pushing him and Ben had been vaguely worried Fox might grow tired of him, and besides, wouldn’t it be better if everyone did as he said? He knew what was right and what was wrong, he would be able to make the right decision, he could solve everyone’s problems if they only listened to _him_. It felt so _stupid_ now. It had taken Poe and Rey and his mother to show him the path he should have followed from the start, and it had taken _so little_ for him to cast all that righteousness away. So little to cast aside the chains he’d bound his people with, and so little to see that Fox was wrong; people could be _good_ , all on their own, if they chose to be.

 

So no Raven King. But maybe, if Phasma and the others decided to let him stay, he could be a Raven Knight. He’d always liked the fighting better anyway.

 

After a long minute, he stood back up and walked over to the tree. There was a blank spot where there were no lights, no pearls, no birds. He held up his hand.

 

On the drooping bough appeared a silver chain thin as moonlight, and upon the chain a little creature closer to a wren than a raven. In its tiny claws it held a tiny sword, and upon the tiny sword were two tiny words.

 

As they walked away, arms wrapped tight around each other against the cold, a shadow fell across the gleaming gold. Then, after a moment, the shadow passed, and the words shone bright, all through the night.

 

_Be free._

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

**The End.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, friends! Thank you so much for reading. It's been a wild ride, doing this, and I appreciate every single one of you who's come with me all this way. Hopefully you enjoyed the ride! :D
> 
> (By the way... there's one more part, a kind of 'what if' that'll be up next week. It isn't 'canon', but if you want to see what would have happened if things had gone another way... keep your eyes peeled. :P)
> 
> (Come hang out with me on  Tumblr! 


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